For Vetti, a pet-health startup, our team made orange the signature colour and kept it out of the product’s data states. Orange could carry the brand in a campaign. Inside the product, the colour attached to a score needed its own meaning. Using the same colour for recognition and an alert would ask someone to work out which job it was doing. So the guidelines gave the data palette a separate role. Scores came with plain-language states, and the alert-copy rule was to state the observation, then give the next step. Those decisions belong together. A calm sentence can be undermined by a colour treatment that suggests urgency. If you’re reviewing an identity for a product, put a marketing layout beside a screen that communicates status. Ask what each colour means in each place.