The Best Fonts and Colors for Earth Day 2021

What do consumers care about more: saving the planet, or preventing Covid-19? This Earth Day (which is fast approaching on April 22, so mark your cals), the answer might surprise you.

The answer…was need-to-know info for marketers last spring, when the industry struggled with adapting to rapidly changing consumer preferences. Environmentalism got bumped down the list of concerns once we all started disinfecting every. single. grocery item. with a wet wipe.

• For instance, Covid-19 accelerated the number one consumer consideration when buying a cleaning product past its eco-friendliness and straight to its ability to kill germs, per a 2020 Buzzback market research survey among US and UK adults.
• And while environmental impact is still a major concern for US consumers, it’s among the least important factors that influence purchasing decisions compared with others, like perception of quality and convenience, per an August 2020 McKinsey study.

TL;DR: This Earth Day (and always, TBH), you need to show consumers your product is both high-quality and good for Mother Earth...but especially the quality part.

Case study: Brandless

Some companies, such as thrift retail brand ThredUp and Native natural deodorant, have recently toed that eco-friendly/high-quality line with their design elements. And the new "tree-free" products from Brandless—the “brand without a brand” that shuttered in February 2020, then relaunched in June—are no exception.

Colors: In one 2017 Buzzback study—the freshest we could find—the market research firm found that the colors US adults most closely associated with the term “clean label” were white (35%), green (30%), and blue (17%).

• While all of Brandless’s “tree-free” products have white accents, and some of them come in ocean blue, perhaps that was guesswork—other products in the line center brown rather than blue.

Font: Although Brandless is literally supposed to be “brandless,” its choice to use a sans serif logo font signals that the products are forward-thinking, clean, and honest, which checks both the high-quality and environmentally progressive boxes, per Fabrik.

Oh yeah, Earth Day: This Earth Day, whether your company has plans for a product launch or a social media graphic, keep the above design elements in mind to signal both quality and sustainability.