Identity design and what makes a successful logo

1. It’s a visual metaphor – Your logo (and possible tagline) is a doorway to a bigger idea. It invites the audience to learn more by telling a quick story through the mark. Nike’s famous swoosh is based on Nike, the winged goddess of victory, and the curve could be wings or the path of her flight. You see how that concept dovetails nicely into what Nike the company is all about. And remember how the Obama Campaign logo looked like a sunrise? Like Nike this logo used an illustration of a concept to introduce the big part of an overall brand – in this case, the idea of “hope”. Every logo should work this way.

2. Keep it simple - A logo is not a mission statement, a mission statement is not an ad, an ad is not a brochure, and a brochure is not a website. Oftentimes a company will try to cram its whole brand story and benefit statement into its identity – there’s a wordy tagline, lengthy name, and complex illustration. All this does is clutter up the mark and reduce its effectiveness across media. Try to keep the logo simple and clean so its “read” is immediate. Additionally, it will scale well (meaning it will work well small on a business card or large on a billboard) and it will compete better against other brand marks.

3. Best in black and white – A good litmus test for any brand mark is to see if it works in black and in white. If the logo loses its punch because it doesn’t have the right colors, or if the line quality or gradients don’t pop in black and in white, it needs to be retooled. The mark should work first as one color or “a knockout,” simply because sometime, somewhere, it will be used that way. Also, if it is strong monochromatically, it likely will be strong no matter what (whereas the reverse is not true).

4. Do your homework - This exercise should actually precede design development, continue during the name and tagline process, and be finalized through the design phase. The identity design process should always include formal trademark and copyright conflict research. You don’t want to go through all the work of developing a name, tagline and design, then fall in love with it and get buy in from your board of directors only to find that it conflicts with a registered mark for someone else. Just ask the former World Wrestling Federation. They marketed themselves as the WWF for several years until the World Wildlife Fund tapped them on the shoulder and said, “Umm…no.” Sure enough, WWF became WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) after a lengthy and expensive court battle. Avoid a mess like this by investing in conflict research before launch.

5. Works in all media – We touched on this in some of the examples above, but it should be underlined. The mark should work on all media. Of course this includes print and digital, but what about silk screening? Embroidery? Flexographic printing? Fax? (Yes, people still fax things.) Macaroni glued to a paper plate? Ok, maybe not that last one, but you get the idea. A successful logo needs to take all of these output forms into consideration.

Identity work is fascinating because we’re trying to tell so much with so little. When it works, it’s like a sculpture; it stands the test of time. For example, the Bass Ale brand mark has been around since 1777 and was the UK’s first registered trademark. Think about how much the logos for Coke, McDonalds, Ford, and General Electric inform our American visual landscape. Good stuff, and great identity design.

Read more posts by Jeff Caporizzo