Logos: The Face and Heart of a Company
We all recognize the importance of a company’s logo. It’s your first chance (sometimes the only one) to tell clients all about yourselves: what services you offer, the company dynamics, seriousness and professionalism. It’s crucial in the process of establishing a name for yourself, maintaining it and also attracting new business opportunities.
To honor the thing that is so small and at the same time “huge”, we have prepared seven DOs and DON’Ts of iconic design creation and of course, some works that have made the logo hall of fame. Whether we’re talking:
food and drinks
automobiles
fashion and retail
famous music bands
basketball teams
electronics
or television
Logos pretty much say it all. So let’s see what the trick is to making your signature memorable:
- Less is more. A simple design will make your logo more memorable. There is no room for clutter when trying to capture the essence of your company.
- Be appropriate. Your iconic design should be professional. No matter how much you would like it to be funny or whimsical, remember it is how people will perceive you.
- Go classic. A traditional approach might just be best. You want your logo to be… how they say in fashion: “the new black”.
- Stand out. Think of a shape or outline that will make your iconic design easy to spot and recognize.
- Make a statement. You want people to remember your logo, so be sure to make an impression.
- Size matters. In this particular situation, you should make sure that your logo is adaptable to any size. Keep the details to a minimum so that it will look good even if it’s one inch.
- Key feature. Concentrate on one main feature that will make your iconic design pop.
Do you think that rules are made to be followed… or broken?
Nice article – good choice of hall of fame logos.
I agree with your observations.
I have people say to me “I have such a good product/service that I don’t need a fancy logo.”
My reply is always: “If you have such a great product/service, you’d better present it on a FANTASTIC logo.” Because branding is philosophy, good products go with good logos, bad service goes with bad logos.
Your logo is your corporate philosophy in a picture. It paints a thousand words.
Great logos better have great products behind them! Couple of times, we’ve have walked into a retail store, shop front’s looking great, shop arrangement is good, place is clean, logo and branding looks great…until you hit the counter, staff is rude when you try for refund, you ask to speak to higher management realise the entire level is exactly the same…then you wonder how the hell did they ever make it so far?
Point is, if you decide you want a great logo, make sure you got the substance to back that up.
about this SB logo – how is it like when other companies aquire the logo in a very similar way. F.e. CofeeHeaven has got almost the same logotype as SB. this is almost stealing.
Take a few steps back from your display and squint your eyes. If you see the Starbucks logo, then you know why they do this.
We do not recognize a text if it’s written correctly, we recognize colors and shapes and do not pay much attention to small details.
Here’s a neat trick: recolor the logo, ask someone to look at it from afar and tell you what company it represents.
I think that these rules are right on par. As some others have said, branding is so important and can make or break a company. If you’re a wonderful company, you better have an amazing logo and vice versa. I am a design student, so I am still in the learning process and this semester we had to create a logo for our own university. There are so many things you have to take into account in making a logo, especially the idea of keeping it simple. The logo has to be recognizable at all sizes, so if you have too much detail, it tends to disappear.