Logo 101
What you need to know before giving a face to your project
It always starts like…
“Here is the new logo I made for my company, any thoughts?”
You just dropped this harmless tweet along with a picture of your homemade creation. You are crafting a new layout for your weblog, you want to sell your homemade stuff online, you put the final piece of code to your mobile app, you are about to go freelance, or to switch careers… Stop right there.
Put the pen down, soldier. Leave this mouse alone. Close PowerPoint right now. This is an order. Because you probably missed some elementary steps of the process.
I’ve spent the last 10 years designing graphical identities for brands and people. I created logos, identities, business cards, record covers, websites, even videogame dedicabs… Ten years that gave me the opportunity to gauge what “designing” means. Design, and graphic design, are not just throwing out a blast of creativity like you’d throw paint on a canvas. Designers are engineers, technicians who master the parameters of space and graphic rules to craft a meticulous message, matching the exact needs of their customers.
Before I unleash you back to where you were heading, I would like to give you a brief overview of the design process involved in creating a logo.
I’m not saying you cannot do it yourself; rather that if you choose not to hire a professional designer, here are the basics you absolutely need to know. My final wish is that you can create something that you like and that fulfills your objective.
Your First Marketeer
Your logo —and your visual identity— are often the very first thing that your customers will see of you. Your logo is the seal that will give credibility to your product, it will go along with your words and voice, it’s the difference that will tell your customers or readers “here I am, and here are my values” in an incredibly short amount of time. It needs to be more than just “good-looking”.
You may believe you know your project but trust me, there is much left to consider to make sure that it has the impact you expect. And it starts way before the first sketches on a napkin. Do not neglect this preparation: in this fertile soil will sprout all your next communication actions, and you’ll see how much easier it is to speak aloud when you know who you are. It’s even exhilarating to rely on strong communication tools carrying your message.
Send the right values
Your logo should show two essential aspects: it should sweat your personality (or your project’s), and it should talk to the type of customers you want to target. Focus on these two objectives first, or risk spending hours rephrasing your message to everyone, at every next step of your project.
Write down your answers to those key questions:
- “What is the core message I want to deliver?”
The core message can be made of values, skills, qualities… - “Who is my target audience?”
Who are your customers / readers / contributors? Where are they from? What is their cultural background? What are they sensitive to? Where can you find them?
Define your values. Clarify your positioning. List your qualities. Bring the things that differentiate you from competition forward (and, by the way, take a closer look at the competition!). Locate your customers online: do they use a specific social network? Do they post on forums? Are these forums targeted by interest? Are they even to be found online? Go for a full description of who they are.
Each answer to these questions will help you find your tone and visual personality. There are great chances that your logo will not be the same if you target big customers or just individuals, or if you’d rater put your righteousness or a special skill of yours forward.
Here are a few efficient resources that can help you:
- Create a “chinese portrait” of your project: it is a personality test which will help you identify aspects or characteristics based on identification to objects, people, elements. Ask yourself the question “if my brand/project/app were a city/color/celebrity, it would be…”
- Build personas from your typical customers,
- Write your manifesto.
“Wait… Is it worth the time and effort to do ALL this? I’m just going to run an online boutique after all!”
Whatever the size and field of your project, I bet that your objective is to make it WORK, am I right? Then I can assure you that all this work will prove to be useful: it sets the necessary foundations so you can keep building on and on. Speaking of which, let’s get our hands dirty!
Give a face to your project
A famous designer named Paul Rand once said: “Design is the method of putting form and content together”. The content is already in front of you: it is made of your values, your target definition and the list of messages you want your target to receive. Now the challenge consists in translating them into a visual language, using the right connotations. Once again, there are many tools available to help you. Let’s start with some design basics: shape, color, texture, spacing, rythm, size, contrast, etc.
Every single day, our brains receive an average of 247 marketing stimuli, most of them which reach us subconsciously. This constitutes a great part of our collective visual culture. We are familiar with so many logos that it is hard to ignore their weight on our brains once we start designing. Whatever type of logo you choose to start with, be it clean or complex, be it with a pictogram or several colors, just keep in mind to start plain and simple.
Typography
There is a 99% chance that your logo will be made of text: an acronym, some words or a motto. Typography can be powerful enough to express a lot of things by itself. I am sure that you know a lot of logos where the font is the message:
(TM) Microsoft Inc.
(c) Facebook Inc.
There are specific connotations in each of those fonts: high-brow, familiar, technologic, cultivated… These are powerful messengers that you can use to declare your values.
There is no magic formula to decide which font you should use, but there are rules, and the very first one is rea-da-bi-li-ty. Make it readable, printable, flexible and versatile enough that it remains recognizable in all situations. Be warned: your logo will suffer. How much? Just think about it being printed on a pen, distorted and blurry, or even half erased by greasy fingers rubbing it nonchalantly. You get the point: your logo should be as readable on a billboard in its full-color glory, as when printed in monochrome on a tiny surface. Yep, that IS scary. It means that fonts should be carefully chosen. I will not go into details here, but check out Jessica Hische’s blog, she is a real professional and gives away useful tips about typography. Her post called “Choosing the right type” is perfect.
Whichever font you choose, keep in mind something very important: some of your logo’s data should always remain impeccably readable: your website’s URL, your address, etc. Go for a simple and solid font, and avoid using a fancy font, even if it is the one you use within your logo. Look at the New York Times: they may be using blackletter for their logo, but there’s nary a word set in blackletter anywhere else ;)
Here are a few resources to get you started:
- the Google Fonts directory, each font being available for web use. This collection features a huge number of hidden treasures.
- Arm yourself with a clear resolve before diving into the treasure trove of fonts on myfonts.com or your budget will quickly cry for mercy.
- Looking for inspiration? Blogs like Brand New list all the logo news.
Colors
A lot has already been said about colors and their meaning: red is powerful, blue is relaxing, pink is angelic. You will have to go through this and pick the colors that your logo will wear.
But in some cases, all can go wrong. Black, for instance, is often used in the music universe, particularly rock’n’roll. It’s also very common in luxury. Black can give an über-classy look to a website or a photographer’s portfolio. But when used in the wrong context, black will instead convey sadness and sorrow.
Green is great, it’s the color of nature, sustainable development and health, but beware!
Photo : K. Soirfeck
Careful with colors, for they suffer the influence of fashion. 2013 was the year of emerald green in fashion and design, and vermillion before it. This year, it seems that royal blue will be the “color-du-jour”. Sometimes, putting two colors together can be tricky. Lime green along with brown was at the high point of design some time ago. But today, you can see it everywhere on products sold in popular supermarkets, which makes the combination way less trendy.
Once again, get back to the core of your work and link it to your research: designing wedding dresses for the Chinese market? Avoid white at all cost: in China, it’s associated with grief and sadness, with red being associated with happy marriage instead.
Once you are done with your color scheme selection (generally 2 or 3 colors should be enough), think about how you can combine them. Contrast is the key: study it carefully. Do not use red text on a black background, for the contrast created will not be sufficient to ensure readability. Beware also that yellow does not contrast enough with white, for instance.
A simple way of avoiding a lot of problems is to start with black on a white background. Then, make your color selection. Do not forget to test each color’s luminosity, and choose carefully the surface that each of them will cover.
A few tools:
- A rapid color theory roundup is available on Color template,
- Check color contrast with Colour Contrast Analyser
- Looking for inspiration? Colourlovers has plenty.
Pictograms, icons and symbols
It might seem appealing to choose a graphic gizmo and add it to your logo. In many cases, it fastens identification and underlines your values. Numerous brands did so, and so well that their symbol define them better than any word.
Nevertheless, you should remain careful: a pictogram or an icon is not a logo. Neither is an illustration. And NEVER is a picture. Not only a complex symbol will weigh down your logo and increase its deciphering time, but you will also have problems creating variants of it. Your logo will be impossible to add to a poster, printing results will be a mess. Beware of gradients, beware of thin borders, run away from multiple colors and abstract shapes that do not have a legitimate reason to be there.
Last but not least, beware of unwanted meanings and associations. Here is a harmless illustration, but you just have to Google “logo fails” to find terrible examples but the truckload. And sometimes, a tiny detail can express the exact contrary to what you wanted people to feel.
Marque déposée SNCF
“Auntie Kate likes your logo”: how to get feedback?
Alright, now that you have hungrily read this article, you have clearly defined your values and selected the voice you want to use, you even have a few ideas for a logo, look: here is my latest sketch, not bad, huh? Why don’t you go with this first idea and ask your relatives for a feedback?
Slow. Down. I still have a lot to tell you.
Let’s say that your carpenter of a brother-in-law hands you the structural blueprints of a house he is building, asking for your opinion. I’m betting your answer will sound like “well, I’m not really sure I’m qualified, I know nothing about carpenting…”
Now, swap “carpenter” for “engineer” or “accountant”, or “optician”, and the answer will be the same.
First, you cannot judge a logo according to its “beauty”. It needs to be evaluated with a cold analytical eye, because a logo works when it fits a communication strategy, built for a specific target. Would you say that this logo for a discount furniture and home items shop is beautiful? Probably no, it may not really “talk” to you. Nevertheless, from a marketing perspective, this logo is spot-on.
Unfortunately, very few people can really tell you if your logo is a success or not. For starters, the people you want to call for help are most likely not part of your target audience. Then, they do not have the same culture, they do not need your product, or they will not be interested by what you have to say as a person or a company.
Finally, they would have a hard time to set their personal taste apart. Are you really bulletproof to pesky comments such as “green? I hate green, it’s ugly” or “The font is really too simple” or even “Funny, I’d rather use a funny 3D dog wearing a shirt saying ‘We deliver in 24 hours’.”
If you still wish to let your relatives assess your visual identity, I suggest you help them judge wisely. Ask them to be as neutral as possible, and to put their feet inside your future customers’ shoes.
Well, to be honest, there’s a particular situation where your relatives can be powerful. This technique is known to be a killer in finding those hidden shapes I told you about earlier, or any unintended connotation in your logo. Bring a good bottle (remember: do not drink and drive!), gather a few friends and let the magic happen. Dizzy friends are the best testing audience you can find.
Back to branding, even when well-established brands request feedback from their customers, the outcome is hardly ever positive. Remember when Gap’s new logo was unveiled to their Facebook fans for criticism? Probably not, because PR took it down as fast as they could to kill the bad buzz it was generating.
More recently, Yahoo!’s CEO Marissa Mayer had a really hard time justifying her company’s new logo, for it had no real substance.
In the end, you are the right person to judge your logo. If you need solid advice, ask designers. Just leave your relatives out of this.
Ready-made logos: what about crowdsourcing?
Crowd-what? You mean those websites where you can pick a logo from a catalogue? Or far worse, those which send you logo proposals from two dozen designers who know NOTHING about you and your project and will not even get paid? Ha ha ha. No.
Of course, this kind of logo process seems attractively cost effective. But designers entering crowdsourcing contests will invest the smallest amount of work they can, which means that you’ll get crude ideas from designers knowing nothing of your values and having absolutely no interest in your endeavor.
The end is just a beginning
I could go on and on, tell you about design techniques, show you hundreds of gorgeous logos, criticize well-done and badly-done ones, give you tons of pro tips, but now you have got to roll up your sleeves and take the plunge!
Before you return to the drawing board, remember this: your logo needs to represent you and your values well. But it should not only please you! Always put your customers in the center of your thinking, put yourself in their shoes and try to pinpoint what would make them call you, hire you, download your app, buy your handmade stuff. And if it so happens that this article helps you promoting your activity, drop me a line!
This article was originally written in french and published on 24 jours de web.
Many thanks to Goulven Champenois for the corrections.
