marketing garden

just finished reading a great book on logo design – Logo Design That Works: Secrets for Successful Logo Design.

effective logo not only represents a company, a service or a product, it “triggers emotions, creates desire, even forges communities”. successful logo represents an idea. that idea lives nowhere else but in our hearts and in our minds. like if we think of being fast, having a good performance, the “v” shaped Nike logo pops up in our minds…

people tend to come together and create communities around things they like. brands and their logos can easily become such a thing. choose them wisely.

when creating a logo you have to think about how it will look on the business card, and in the ad on the mural, or on the web-page in different browsers, or on the faxed black and white document. is it easy to reproduce your creation for new applications (like photo based logos)? have you kept in mind a possibility for the logo owner to expand his/her business? isn’t logo too trendy, will it last 25 years and still be cool? overall trend is that bigger and more complex companies tend to have simple logos (like 3M) – they are recognizable but do not go into too much details of company’s business.

the logo has to be a clear message whether it communicates a company description, a business aspiration or a range of emotions company wants to create in it’s clients. the symbol or font you choose for the logo has to correspond by its nature to the philosophy and business type of the company for which you are creating the logo. when using expensive looking silver and/or gold colour you have to remember that some media can’t reproduce them correctly and they will show up as just gray and dirty yellow. a logo does not have to have only one possible design, it can be a range of different modifications as long as it bears the same style and idea and stays recognizable.

in the logo creation process you have to think not only about a company and its business but also about its clients. how they will perceive the new logo? what will they think about it? will they understand the idea communicated by the logo? sometimes it is a good idea to look back in time and see how a similar idea or a product was represented 40 or 50 years ago. you may get useful ideas by combining that historical experience with a modern approach.

how do you start designing a logo? in the beginning it is important just to sit down and to figure out what qualities, characteristics and idea you do want to communicate through your creation – the logo. and let the creative process begin!

p.s. i would be happy if you would share your experience regarding logos in the comments.

p.p.s. and thanks to Cloud for the inspiration