A well designed logo creates immediate brand recognition and in some cases, it has a hidden meaning that helps define what a business stands for. This is definitely the case for some of the world’s biggest tech companies, such as Facebook, IBM, Dell, and Intel. Those company logos all have the color blue in common — that’s not a mistake. In fact, it’s a very deliberate choice that plays to your comfort level and ability to trust the company itself.

The color blue is a primary “cool” color, meant to create a sense of calm, which is exactly what tech companies want. Blue is also associated with efficiency, clear communication, and mental focus, all of which aligns perfectly with the image major tech brands want to project. Additionally, a 2019 study published in the Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice found that consumers consistently associated blue more strongly with trust than red. This helps explain why blue has become such a major force in tech branding.

Blue is such a popular marketing color that 50 of the world’s top 100 tech brands use it, according to DeSantis Briendel, a B2B brand strategy and design firm. Well-established companies incorporate it as a primary identifier across their various platforms to signal dependability among the competition. It helps those companies maintain the trustworthy image they desire, along with a recognizable presence for customers along the way.

According to WizardPins, a custom merchandise manufacturer, the color blue is used in the logos of 275 Fortune 500 companies. This presents a problem: The use of blue has become so widespread that consumers’ ability to differentiate one company from the other is weakening. While the idea behind the color is to communicate a level of trust in the marketplace, it is difficult to stand out when every company’s logo looks similar.

However, despite the overuse of blue in the tech world, not many companies are moving  to a drastically different palette. There are some exceptions of course, most notably Twitter, which rebranded as X in 2023, and traded the familiar sky blue and white for black and white. However, instead of eliminating blue altogether, companies like IBM, LinkedIn, and Microsoft, have instead adjusted the shade of blue they use.

And even though big tech widely remains in the blue spectrum, other companies are instead choosing to go a different route. Apple, Amazon, Spotify, and OpenAI, one of the AI boom’s big four, are just some of the companies that have established their brands without relying on blue as a dominant color in their primary logos. In each case, the decision to choose specific brand colors was made from the beginning, or evolved over time, based on the identity and message that each company wanted to communicate.