Are all NDP logos Red and White? NDP Logos sorted by Colour Schemes

The tradition of having a logo represent a National Day Parade (NDP) first began in 1998. Each logo has a complementary identity system which helps to brand parade paraphernalia and props.

With NDP 2020, 23 logos have been created to celebrate Singapore’s birthday. Previously, we sorted these 23 logos by graphical elements. This time, the logos would be sorted according to colour schemes.

Sorting the logos by colour is tricky as words in logos (often in black or grey) could give a false impression of the overall logo colour scheme. Thus, the colour of words were not considered during the sorting process.

There are six distinct colour schemes, with red being used in all logos except NDP 2007’s.

Red and White

This is the most common colour scheme, which comes as no surprise since red and white are the colours of our national flag. However, many of the reds are different from the official red colour of the flag - Pantone Red 032. The NDP logos of 2010 and 2016 used different shades of red to add visual interest, while the rest used a clear two-tone palette.

Red and Orange

Significant observations could be made for the logos in this category. All three logos were created for NDPs three years apart (2005, 2008, 2011) and feature five stars. Furthermore, they follow a similar visual hierarchy consisting of a top graphic and a bottom slogan. Conspiracy time?

Red and Yellow

Only NDP 2002’s logo is in this category, which consists of a shining red heart. It is worth noting that this was the only time when the slogan was in baby blue instead of the usual black or grey. The prominence of the slogan provided an opportunity to contrast the red heart and flag graphic.

Red and Blue

Red and blue was a common colour scheme in early NDP logos, with blue representing human-like figures against a red backdrop in 1999 and 2000. The scheme most recently appeared in NDP 2014’s logo, which used cyan instead of the traditional dark blue.

Red and Purple

This category includes this year’s logo which features an Instagram-inspired palette.

Multicolour

All logos in this category have at least four different colours. Five colours were used to complement the five stars in the logos for NDP 2004 and 2009, while multicolour gradients were used for the NDP 2001 and 2006 logos.

In summary, this chart shows a majority of logos with a red-white colour scheme, followed by a multicolour scheme with four or more colours:

In the next part of this series, we would look at NDP logos sorted by their typefaces.

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