As a designer, I want to dive deeper into the topic of what makes a logo good or bad and what benefits or difficulties it might bring to the entity.
First, we need to understand the purposes and reasons for having a logo, so let’s go back in history to find that out. When was the first logo created and used? The main reason for these early visual representations was to distinguish fellows in your own tribe from the strangers and enemies. Later on, as societies were evolving, the meaning and ideas behind the symbols were evolving as well.
It was a matter of pride and legacy for successful rulers, a matter of belongings and faithfulness for religions, and a matter of braveness and heroism for warriors. As each group had its own distinguished attributes, depending on its location or craft, for example, the symbols and emblems usually were associated with these attributes.
What Is A Logo?
To understand what a logo is, we first must understand what the main purpose of logos is. The design process must aim to make the logo immediately recognizable, inspiring trust, admiration, loyalty, and an implied superiority. The logo is one aspect of a company’s commercial brand or economic entity, and its shapes, colors, fonts, and images usually are strikingly different from other logos in the same market niche.
––––– Logos are used to identify. –––––
“A logo is a flag, a signature, an escutcheon, a street sign. A logo does not sell (directly), it identifies. A logo is rarely a description of a business. A logo derives meaning from the quality of the thing it symbolizes, not the other way around. A logo is less important than the product it signifies; what it represents is more important than what it looks like. The subject matter of a logo can be almost anything.” – Paul Rand
What Makes A Good Logo?
A good logo is distinctive, memorable, appropriate, practical, versatile and simple in form. A concept or “meaning” is usually behind an effective logo, and it communicates the intended message. A logo should be able to be printed and displayed at any size and, in most cases, be effective without color.
Logo Design Process
“Some wonder what’s so difficult about creating a good logo. They’re small, they look easy to do, so no problem, right? When you only see the result of a designer’s efforts, the logo creation can look like it was a simple task. But it’s not. A logo takes thought and creativity, and many elements combine to make a good one.” (via Harrison Mcleod)
When creating a logo, follow a process that ensures the final design meets the needs of the clients. Below, we have listed the typical process that professional logo designers follow.
1. Design brief
2. Research & Brainstorm
3. Sketching & conceptualizing.
4. Execution
5. Presentation & Revisions
6. Deliver & Support
6 Principles Of Effective Logo Design
You should follow the five principles below to ensure that your design meets all of these criteria:
1. Simple
Simplicity makes a logo design easily recognizable, versatile and memorable. Good logos feature something unexpected or unique, without being “overdrawn.”
- Uniform — Doesn’t have more than one symbol in one logo. This should be obvious as the logo actually is the symbol, but I’ve seen so many logos that try to include a few symbols, one after another — for example making two or more stylized letters. It makes the logo distracting and draws attention away.
- Mono-color — This allows it to be easily embedded on uniforms, made as a store sign, placed on the product or just be printed black and white on letterhead.
- Scalability — All of these logos can be scaled down to a tiny size and still be recognizable. This allows the brand to show the logo in a variety of places such as corporate stationery, a pencil, the header of the website, a large street sign, and so on.
- Clarity — If the logo is clean and minimal it’s easy to remember, it doesn’t distract the eye, and it doesn’t feel annoying.
2. Memorable
Following closely on this principle of simplicity is that of memorability. An effective logo design should be memorable, which is achieved by keeping it simple yet appropriate.
3. Timeless
An effective logo should be timeless. Will yours stand the test of time? Will it still be effective in 20, 40 or 50 years?
In most cases, designers love trends; trends give us more projects. But trends change frequently, and changing the logo too often is damaging for business. Every logo designer should ask himself, will this logo be appropriate in 30, 50 years?
4. Versatile
An effective logo works across a variety of media and applications. For this reason, logos should be designed in vector format, to ensure that they scale to any size.
5. Appropriate
How you “position” the logo should be appropriate for its intended audience. For example, a child-like font and color scheme would be appropriate for a logo for a children’s toy store, not so much for a law firm.
6. Artistic
- Grids — A nice and easy practice to make the logo solid and organic-looking is to use a grid. There are a variety of grids to choose from but the oldest one and probably the most powerful is the “golden ratio.” We can find it everywhere: in nature, in ancient architecture, and in most famous logos, of course, such as Apple, Twitter, Pepsi, Google, etc.
- Clever — Not every logo has to be clever, but it’s an extra step to makes people say “wow.” It’s a good way to showcase “out of the box” thinking of the designer and the creativity of the company. There are many ways to “go clever” with logo design, such as hidden symbols (Toblerone has a bear inside of the mountain, Tour de France has cyclists among the letters), negative space (FedEx has an arrow between E and X, Formula 1 has 1 between an F and red motion blur) and other creative techniques.
- Balanced — A strong logo should be well balanced in terms of shape and color. Sometimes designers go so deep in their creativity that they forget about the visual appearance of the logo. One element should not offset another, the main color should complement a secondary one, and the whole picture should be appealing to the eye.
Closing Thoughts.
In conclusion, I’d like to say that any rule can be broken. But before making a decision to break the rules, make sure it’s a wise and appropriate solution that will benefit the brand and amplify its value.
Logo design is not as simple as it seems, and an ordinary logo could have quite a detrimental impact on your business.
That’s why it’s critical to invest the time and resources into professional logo design so that you can build your business empire, with a well-designed and value-adding logo at the forefront.
Last, I would like to recommend a great book called Logo Modernism — by Jens Müller
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