Logo Lessons - Series Intro
What’s a logo to a brand?
There are lots of misconceptions about what a logo is in relevance to your business. First, let’s look at a what a logo is not.
A logo is not a brand. A brand is something much more complex and abstract. In our modern times, a brand is the “feeling” that people get about your business. Big companies spend millions of dollars trying to create the right “feeling” amongst consumers.
That feeling is aroused by many elements, including obviously your product or service, your story, your advertisements, your values, your customer experience, your people, your purpose, your locations, your website and lastly your verbal and visual identity. All these brand “touchpoints” are instances where consumers interact with your brand and feel something as a result.
Your logo is simply the focal component of your brand’s visual identity. Another critical purpose of your logo is this:
Your logo is the vessel for your brand’s feeling.
Think about it. How often do we see a brand’s logo in the complete absence of any of the brand’s other subject matter? Almost never. It’s always in the presence of some other touchpoints, such as on a website, business card, commercial intro/outro, product packaging, etc. The more we see two objects together, the more automatically our brain associates them. This results in the logo being heavily associated with your brand. It basically acts as a reminder to consumers. When they see your logo, their mind brings up all the feelings associated with your brand. Some powerful logos can also evoke feelings on their own, but we’ll talk about that later.
The point is that your logo serves as the vessel for your brand. As such, it’s quite important. Over the next several posts, we’ll look at 6 key elements that can contribute to a powerful, even timeless logo:
- Uniqueness
- Simplicity
- Harmony
- Memorability
- Clarity & scalability
- Versatility
It’s important to remember that a logo doesn’t need to have all of these elements. In fact, it usually only needs to be strong in 2 or 3 of them to serve your brand well. Having said that,
Nevertheless, if you’re able to pull off a logo that has all 6, it’s definitely a good thing! Plus, knowing all 6 gives you good guidelines for your design process.