Jiang, Gorn, Galli and Chattopadhyay probed associations made to circles and more angular shapes used in logos. They learned via a series of experiments that “the mere circularity and angularity of a brand logo is powerful enough to affect perceptions of the attributes of a product or company…circular- versus angular-logo shapes activate softness and hardness associations, respectively, and these concepts subsequently influence product/company attribute…there are shape effects even when the shape is incidentally exposed beforehand…rather than being a part of the logo itself.”
Yuwei Jiang, Gerald Gorn, Maria Galli, and Amitava Chattopadhyay. “Does Your Company Have the Right Logo? How and Why Circular- and Angular-Logo Shapes Influence Brand Attribute Judgments.” Journal of Consumer Research, in press.
Sally Augustin, PhD, a cognitive scientist, is the editor of Research Design Connections (www.researchdesignconnections.com), a monthly subscription newsletter and free daily blog, where recent and classic research in the social, design, and physical sciences that can inform designers’ work are presented in straightforward language. Readers learn about the latest research findings immediately, before they’re available elsewhere. Sally, who is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, is also the author of Place Advantage: Applied Psychology for Interior Architecture (Wiley, 2009) and, with Cindy Coleman, The Designer’s Guide to Doing Research: Applying Knowledge to Inform Design (Wiley, 2012). She is a principal at Design With Science (www.designwithscience.com) and can be reached at sallyaugustin@designwithscience.com.