Why Your Logo Matters

Small businesses come in all shapes and sizes. You have some who are just starting out, others who have been up and running for 20+ years, but if there’s one thing that’s consistent throughout it’s that your logo and brand matter. We see it all too often, people use their cousin’s son’s best friend to piece together some logo for their company. Just like that they throw down their $125, whip up an LLC and they are on their way to small business success. While it is our job to create these lovely brands, we want to educate you as to why it matters more than you may think.

The late, great Paul Rand once said “Design is the silent ambassador of your brand”, but we take it a step back from there. Your brand is the silent ambassador to your company. So…you run this beautiful business, you’ve poured your heart and soul into it and your nose is to the grind stone day in, and day out. If you have a shop, or a store, or a restaurant you make sure it looks as good as it can every single day. The floors are cleaned, inventory is neatly arranged, etc. You proudly flip on that open sign and start serving your industry like so many days before.

Fast forward a bit and you’re ready to work on advertising your company, maybe the yellow pages salesman coaxes you into running a 6 month ad with them, or you post an ad in your local restaurant’s menu. The sales people for those places are going to ask for your logo, and they will probably need it in certain formats. They need a single-color, transparent PNG at 300DPI. Or maybe they need the .EPS file in full-color so they can lay out the ads in high-res. But what happens if you only have a quick logo that was made in a combination of word and MS paint? Brand inconsistency. Maybe your colors are blue, grey and white but your logo was only done that very way. Blue background, white type and a grey mark. But what if they are only going to be printing on white backgrounds? What if they can only print single color? What if they only print in a square format, but your logo is very rectangular in shape? Now that business that you are working so hard on every day is as inconsistent as the weather in Northeast Ohio.

Recognition is key

We live in a world where attention spans come and go in an instant. Think about every big brand that you can and what comes to mind when you think of it. I’ll run down a small list:

• McDonalds — Fast food, “M”, red and yellow
• UPS — Packages, brown trucks, etc.
• Best Buy — Consumer electronics, blue and yellow
• Starbucks — Coffee, green and white
• Apple — Technology, sleek, modern. Apple symbol with a bite out of it

What do all of these have in common? You could recognize them instantly if you saw them. Without thinking twice you would see it and associate it with something. Your small business can have a similar effect. While you probably don’t make millions upon billions per year where you can afford huge ad budgets, signage, etc all over the place you can afford to have a beautiful brand created for you. We have worked with companies that are single-person businesses up to global manufacturing companies with manufacturing companies all over the globe, and the one thing we have made sure to do is to keep their brands consistent.

It’s More Important When You’re Small

The companies that were listed above are recognizable because they are so large you see them everywhere. People know when the McDonald’s logo isn’t correct, or when a Nike “swoosh” just doesn’t look right, but they may not know if your logo is correct when they see it in an ad or online someplace. Every brand that we lay out and create we setup brand guidelines, colors, styles, etc., which is no different from most companies like ours. But where we typically differ is we setup a brand portal as well. This portal is an online collection of everything related to your brand. So if you want to run an ad someplace, but have no clue what an EPS logo means, you can send them a simple URL, they can go on this portal, find the appropriate files and use them correctly. This will make your life much easier, and people will start to recognize your brand more and more when it’s consistently being used correctly.

So in a world full of small business owners, entrepreneurs and hustlers, can you afford not to have a logo, and a brand that is consistent?

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-Chris Schneider
Partner | Duo Design + Development