Strategy - Friday, September 16, 2011 12:03 - 0 Comments

Building a Better Logo

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.

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