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I’ll be honest, I haven’t ever consciously thought to myself ‘man, there are sooooooo many red fast food logos in the world.’ It wasn’t until I saw this clip below that I made the connection. McDonald’s, Arby’s, Wendy’s, In-N-Out, Jack in the Box, Burger King and many more all use the color red prominently in their logos.
Below, Tech Insider dives deep into why red is used in so many fast food logos and it turns out that the root of the answer dates back thousands of years to a time when humans first began writing on the walls of caves. A time when humans didn’t have access to a virtually unlimited number of colors across the spectrum.
Here’s some of the text/transcript from the video above if you’d rather read than watch a video:
The average human can see ten million colors, but red is special. Turns out, it’s one of the first colors our ancient ancestors thought important enough to name. Back before alphabets and writing, early human languages were surprising… uncolorful. There were words for “black” and “white’ and “red” but not much else. In fact, blue didn’t show up until thousands of years later in 200 A.D.
As a result, we have a deeper connection to red than any other color on the spectrum and we react to it in certain ways that actually play to fast food companies’ advantage. For starters, researchers have found that red can evoke a sense of urgency. On top of that, it also has an innate ability to wet our appetites. And when you pair those two together you’ve got the perfect recipe to attract hungry customers who want food, fast. (via)
80% of the information we process on a daily basis comes from our eyes and red is one of the few colors that is viewed positively all across the world. This color also triggers innate responses in most people. So it’s not really all that surprising that the world’s largest fast-food chains would seek to capitalize on that by incorporating red into their logos, is it?