Colorful Personality

Josh: We're obviously big fans of bright, bold, even garish colors. Not everyone likes it. It's not the majority of people, but we definitely hear, "Oh man, green and orange. That's like the worst color combination ever. It feels like I just puked all over my screen and stuff, and what's with all the avocado?"

I get that it's not for everyone, but the flip side is that it's a talking point. It's our brand. Most people love it, but the people who don't are very vocal about it as well. It adds a level of personality, and people talk about it both for the good and the bad.

We've used orange historically in a lot of our products, and so that makes another appearance here. This time it just happened to be coupled with green. And I think that was kind of the outdoor, earthy vibe that we were trying to put across. You've got the green representative of getting out there and exploring, and orange . . . well, because we like orange.

Josh says the Outback wanderlust of the film Australia inspired the Gowalla logo (left). The original app icon (middle) was green to conjure a sense of the outdoors but was later replaced by a brighter icon (right).
Josh says the Outback wanderlust of the film Australia inspired the Gowalla logo (left). The original app icon (middle) was green to conjure a sense of the outdoors but was later replaced by a brighter icon (right).
Josh says the Outback wanderlust of the film Australia inspired the Gowalla logo (left). The original app icon (middle) was green to conjure a sense of the outdoors but was later replaced by a brighter icon (right).

Figure 2-9. Josh says the Outback wanderlust of the film Australia inspired the Gowalla logo (left). The original app icon (middle) was green to conjure a sense of the outdoors but was later replaced by a brighter icon (right).