By OCI
Your brand’s logo is the most important communication device your company will ever possess. It is your ambassador to foreign lands, your customer service representative and the coat of arms for your “army” of employees. We happen to live in a very visual world and assessments are made on appearances all the time. Your logo is usually the first visual representation of you and your brand that your customers and prospects will come in contact with and whether you intend it to or not, it’s going to make an impression. Whether it’s a good impression or a bad impression is totally up to you and your design team. Here are some tips on creating a great logo:
The Nike Swoosh, created by Carolyn Davidson
1. Don’t tell the whole story
A common error many business owners and designers make is wanting to tell the whole story at once. Logos, however, have a very, very limited window of time in which they can communicate a concept – even faster than billboards. They can rarely convey more than one, simple concept at once. A great example of this is the Nike logo which represents a very large company that does many things. Their logo does not illustrate their retail stores or their training equipment. You don’t see any shoes or gear. Their website and iPod products are all absent. Instead we see a simple mark that quickly and simply illustrates the idea of movement. That’s the core of the Nike brand. It’s a bold concept that is simple to comprehend and is expertly illustrated in their logo.
The Fed Ex logo, created by Lindon Leader
2. Interesting Shapes
Another common error for anyone designing a logo is to focus only on the positive shapes. Many times a new layer of depth can be added to a logo by playing with the negative space. Any good designer will tell you that you need to make sure that your negative space is as interesting as your positive space, but sometimes you can take that to another level completely by using the negative space to tell an additional part of the story. Take the FedEx logo for example. Many people saw this logo for years before they noticed the negative space between the “E” and the “x.” By tweaking the type very slightly the designer was able to “hide” a forward pointing arrow into the logo and use it as a secondary way of communicating what the brand stands for, which I would take to be something similar to “going.”
The Amazon logo
3. Hidden and Multiple Meanings
You can also hide content or secondary messages into the logo in plain sight. This can really create a subliminal suggestion in the brain and help engrain in the viewer’s mind the concepts you are trying to communicate. One logo that does this very well is the Amazon logo. On first glance you see the word Amazon and notice a little smile underneath it. Ok, so Amazon is happiness. On second glance, you notice this smile is actually an arrow that looks like it’s coming into the word. So Amazon is happiness and it brings it to me. Then, upon a very close inspection you realize the arrow goes from “a” to “z,” suggesting to the view that Amazon’s got everything from A to Z to bring me happiness. I think it’s very clever and certainly gets the brand’s position across, whether you notice it at first or not.
4. Update
Old Science Channel Logo
Once you’ve developed your logo, you should protect it at all costs. Be very selective of how and when it’s used, since it is a graphical representation of your company and you don’t want it used and abused. However, even though I am a staunch advocate for protecting your logo from bastardization or fads, there are times when a logo update is important to keep your brand fresh and relevant. One logo that was redesigned this year was the Science Channel. Their original logo did have a science look to it, but it was very complicated and hard to read. In the new logo, you can see that they dropped the “The” from the name, which by itself made the whole thing much simpler. They also drastically changed the whole look to appear almost as if it were an entry on the periodic table of elements. The design is very easy to read as is the concept. Overall, it was a huge improvement over what they had.
The New Science Channel Logo
The new Pepsi logo
Another example of a logo redesign is the recently released Pepsi logo. It hasn’t been quite as successful. This logo came from nowhere and seemed to instigate change for the sake of change. No real, clear definition of the brand or its position. While I don’t mind this redesign and actually kind of enjoy the asymmetry of the new logo, I can’t really argue with the following diagram. (Couldn’t find who to credit the diagram below to, but someone did post a timeline of some of the minor changes in the Coke logo here.)
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Tags: Amazon, Branding, Brandon D Hunt, FedEx, Graphic Design, Logo Design, Nike, Pepsi, Science Channel
Hrmm that was weird, my comment got eaten. Anyway I wanted to say that it’s nice to know that someone else also mentioned this as I had trouble finding the same info elsewhere. This was the first place that told me the answer.
It would depend on how you look at it and exactly where you’re coming from on the subject really. Ultimately beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but Now i’m with you on this one.
At last, got what I was searching for! I am positively having fun with reading every little bit of it. Happy I stumbled onto this article: Logo Design. Ideas to help communicate your brand’s image. | O'Neill Communications.and I have your website bookmarked to read the latest article you write. Thanks for your great articles!