| Abstract | Brand logos are one of the most important brand elements for a company. Brand logos not only identify the company, they also affect consumers’ perception and feeling about the company. In this research, we would look at two of the most basic visual aspects in creating a logo, that are, the color of the logo and the shape of the logo. Previous research has looked into the impact of logo shape on hardness and softness perception of a product, showing that a product with an angular logo is perceived as harder than the same product with a round logo. However, no previous research has investigated the joined impact of logo shapes and logo colors on brand and product evaluations. In marketing, previous research has predominantly looked at multiple sensory inputs from a perspective of congruence (fit or match) of these inputs with each other. However, in the current research we take a different stance and see the two sensory inputs together from the perspective of emotions. We are considering the two dimensions of emotions, arousal (how much a person feels energized, and not sleepy) and pleasantness (how good or bad someone feels) to predict the outcome based on these two sensory inputs. In order to investigate the relationship, we chose two logo shapes (round and angular). For these shapes, previous research has shown that sharp angular objects are perceived as a threat (which can be seen as high in arousal but low in pleasantness). On the other hand, there is a general preference for round logos (people find round logos to be more pleasant). We also chose two colors (blue and red), where red is more arousing than blue but blue is more pleasant than red. Previous research has also shown that in simple ads, people prefer ads that are high in pleasantness and high in arousal over ads with any other combination of pleasantness and arousal. We predict that since blue is low in arousal but high in pleasantness, there would be a preference towards angular shapes with blue color because as it increases the arousal from the logo. However, red is highly arousing, so the addition of angular shape will not create a positive impact. Therefore, it is predicted that brand evaluations and product evaluations will go higher with a blue-angular logo than a blue-round logo, whereas there would be no difference in evaluations in the case of red logos.
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