Effective Logo Design Should Enhance Your Branding
Just so there’s no confusion: A logo is not a brand. But a good logo design should absolutely represent the brand. One of the 20th century’s most influential designers, said,
"The logo is the entry point to the brand."
Milton Glaser
Glaser's comment could not be more true and clearly identifies the priority that your organization’s logo design should have as well as the essential part it plays in your overall marketing communications effort.
As one branding specialist wrote, “The use of logo design goes back nearly 1,000 years. Early tradespeople use to press identification marks into gold, paper, pottery and more. These trademarks are still used for the same reason they were established centuries ago: to provide an easy method for recognizing a particular product. These special, distinctive marks on the product made it easier to differentiate a quality crafted product from one that was not well made. It’s still helpful to think of a logo design in those terms: your logo is your symbol — your mark — of guaranteed authenticity. A simple swoosh on a pair of athletic shoes transforms those modest sneakers into desirable, quality footwear with an unspoken guarantee of “authentic athletic performance.”
Good logo design should be first judged on whether or not it keeps the target market in mind as well as fits well with the company. Secondly, the logo must wear well on the inside. Corporate executives and employees have to see that logo mark everyday, and it better appeal to them as well as say something about the company’s distinctive in it market niche. As mentioned earlier, this logo design will represent your brand and will often lead in the sales process. Therefore, along with a firm handshake, a confident presence, and other-centered relating, your logo brand identity will lead in the sales cycle and should help (not hinder!) to communicate your true brand: your promise delivered. At Catalyst Marketing Communications, we pursue your story with curiosity and passion so that we can work with you to develop the most appropriate logo design to best communicate your branding promise and leave a good first and lasting impression.
"Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people."
Leo Burnett
Your corporate identity is the front door of your product and service. The logo design or mark of your organization is often the very first impression a potential customer or supporter has of your organization. That’s why it’s important that your logo design is an accurate representation of your marketplace positioning, personality, and mission. And for service organizations with “invisible” offerings (no tangible products), the various logo designs / corporate identity pacakges often represents their offerings. So don’t underestimate their importance.
It has been our experience after 20 years of doing logo designs and corporate identity pacakges that each client had a conscious or sub-conscious, pre-determined set of preferences from which they judged the logo designs as good or bad. These PREFERENCES (whether conscious of or not) acted like a filter from which everything was decided. So years ago, we decided to use a visual tool to help extract these logo design preferences and serve to “get everyone on the same page” in advance, thus virtually eliminating wasted effort. This gives our clients more control of the direction, process and budget. It is said that a “picture is worth a thousand words.” Well, our visual logo design resource is used to accomplish what words cannot. As a result, our client’s ownership and excitement in the branding is always high.
Some Brand Identity Development Tips
- When seeing the brand identity package, the viewer should “get it” immediately and be able to get at least a “sneak peek” into your brand promise. Express the appropriate tone and voice articulated in your brand strategy. The challenge then, is to create a logo / corporate identity that is simple and immediate without being boring or institutional.
- Your logo design should convey a sense of emotion and personality that is contextual to the intended audience. The typography, the symbols, the shapes and textures, and color palette should attempt to tell a story and leave an impression that is in line with what the company, the story sender, means for the receiver to get. And, like a salesman’s need to contextually connect with his customer through his relational attitude and attentiveness, your company’s corporate identity / overall branding can act as the reputation that precedes you into the marketplace.
- The logo and brand identity package should be simple and clean (if possible), yet impactful as well as illustrious. The logo design shold be easily reproduced (work well in black only if necessary), use a limited number of colors (for reasons of reproduction costs), and still look execellent when scaled down.
- Your logo and brand identity package should look different than other branding packages in your same marketspace. Seek to clealy and strongly differentiate yourself from the pack with your branding. We have seen smaller competitors gain ground by investing wisely to cummunicate their brand more uniquely than their rivals.