The problem is that the logo is not understood by many in the first place–even some designers. It is not simply a commodity that you can purchased to make your business appear better than it really is. It also is not an adornment that everyone needs, in order to look legitimate. The logo is actually a promise, an investment, and a part of a branding strategy.
As a result your branding strategy, and marketing efforts need to reflect what your audience needs to know to be attracted to your services, and eventually become loyal customers. The logo is a part of that strategy. In some business cases the logo will be more critical than in other business cases. But the fact remains that the logo must reflect who you are, and it must communicate to your market at an emotional level.
Category: Logo
AT&T New Logo
The recent unveiling of the at&t (sort of) new logo created quite a buzz online and not only. And it doesn’t look to be a very good one as the opininons are spreading from whatever to it sucks. I have to admit I tend to agree with the last. I don’t like it.
It’s just a basic example of what I talked about in my previous post: re-branding with no particular reason. Challanging customers, just to see if they can follow your periodic rebranding efforts.
Short history: last year Cingular snapped up AT&T Wireless, which had been spun off from AT&T in 2001. They then spent the better part of the past year spending tons of time and money trying to eliminate the AT&T Wireless brand and integrate its network, subscribers, and services into Cingular. The integration is pretty much done, but now they’re going to go through all that again, except in reverse, which means that some of you out there will go from being AT&T Wireless subcribers, to Cingular subscribers, only to become AT&T Wireless subscribers all over again.
I bet they needed a pricy branding agency advicing them into this strategy (rumors say Interbrand).
Well as this wasn’t enough, while the AT&T old name was (and I agree) a valuable one, the old logo wasn’t “trendy” anymore. So the agency put up a memo convincing the AT&T guys that the old logo needs a re-work, “aimed at freshening up the brand”. The globe is getting a third transparent dimension. Capitals are turned to lowercases, having it’s more trendy and modern as an argument:
Lowercase type is now used for the “AT&T” characters because it projects a more welcoming and accessible image.
Well I tend to agree more with Russel on this one:
Lowercase is a horrible choice, though I’m sure some branding company out there sold the choice as adding a “new, youthful” appearance or something (a perfect choice for the name’s 110 year history). Secondly, the fact it’s not bold makes the letters themselves less of a logomark, so now you *need* to have the globe-thing next to the letters or you lose the whole branding.
Further readings:
at&t brand center
Evolutionary chart of logo (PDF)
New logo formats
Tag: logo, rebranding, re-branding
Brands and Colors
Next to the logo, the typeface, the name or the slogan, color is important to the brand recognition. Whether is about the logo itself or it’s about packaging, color is a brand image element to be considered. Basically color can help send out a message about the brand, or make it easier to remember, to associate with. So if it is used, after all, as a recognition element, there are things to be considered.
Color is may be an important brand asset. It may help clients and prospects recognize your company or product. But color can be used to support goals way beyond just recognition. It can be used to evoke emotion and build that all-important connection with the people who surround your brand.
You can use color to further differentiate your organization from your competitors, revitalize an aging product and engage and unite your employees, partners and customers. When you go beyond the traditional use of color, you can make incredible strides in achieving your goals.
Some colors are associated with certain emotions that the brand wants to convey (e.g. Loud colors, such as red, that are meant to attract the attention of drivers on freeways are appropriate for companies that require such attention. Red, white, and blue are often used in logos for companies that want to project patriotic feelings. Green is often associated with health foods.)
For other brands, more subdued tones and lower saturation can communicate dependability, quality, relaxation, etc.
Color is also useful for linking certain types of products with a brand. Warm colors (red, orange, yellow) are linked to hot food and thus can be seen integrated into many fast food logos. Conversely, cool colors (blue, purple) are associated with lightness and weightlessness, thus many diet products have a light blue integrated into the logo.
William Arruda at MarketingProfs.com has a list of 10 ways to make the most of color:
To make the most of your color, ensure that it…
- Supports your brand attributes
- Is relevant to your target audience
- Is always the same shade and hue
- Is visible to all members of your brand community, inside and outside the company
- Is understood and appropriately used by all employees
- Is featured on all your communications materials and sales tools
- Is different from your competitors’ colors
- Works in all parts of the world where you plan to do business
- Is applied to more than just your logo
- Comes with guidelines on its use for partners and affiliates
More than that, in case you missed it, Martin Jelsema on BuzzworthyBranding has an interesting color guidelines for brands:
- Red – evokes aggressiveness, passion, strength, vitality. In business, it is great for accents and boldness, stimulates appetites, is associated with debt.
- Pink – evokes femininity, innocence, softness, health. In business, be sure you’re aware of its feminine implications and associations.
- Orange – evokes fun, cheeriness, warm exuberance. In business, it’s great to highlight information in graphs and on charts evokes positivity, sunshine and cowardice. In business, it appeals to intellectuals and is excellent for accenting things. Too much is unnerving.
- Green – evokes tranquility, health, freshness. In business, its deep tones convey status and wealth; its pale tones are soothing.
- Blue – evokes authority, dignity, security, faithfulness. In business, it implies fiscal responsibility and security. Plus it is universally popular.
- Yellow – is an optimistic color that almost always evokes a positive response. Yellow gets you motivated; it stimulates creative and intellectual energy; it’s cheerful and easygoing.
- Purple – evokes sophistication, spirituality, costliness, royalty and mystery. In business, it’s right for upscale and artistic audiences.
- Brown – evokes utility, earthiness, woodsiness and subtle richness. In business, it signifies less important items in documents.
- White – evokes purity, truthfulness, being contemporary and refined. In business, it enlivens dark colors and can be refreshing or sterile.
- Gray – evokes somberness, authority, practicality and a corporate mentality. In business, it is always right for conservative audiences.
- Black – evokes seriousness, distinctiveness, boldness and being classic. In business, it creates drama and is often a fine background color.
Further readings on this:
Martin Lindstron’s Brand Sense : Build Powerful Brands through Touch, Taste, Smell, Sight, and Sound
Designer’s Guide to Color series: Designer’s Guide to Color
Logo resources roundup
Keeping the logo topic on, here is a round-up of web resources on this subject:
The Best Brands of the World — one of the most visited web sites intended for browsing and exchange of the World’s famous brand-logos. The primary use of site is to enable designers to access vector-forms of the well-known brand-logos that they can use in their presentations, given the permission of the copyright owner. The web site also enables designers to upload their own works and professional details.
AllTheLogos.com — is an online database of logotypes and logo design. This includes more than 70,000 companies and organizations brands logos, team sports logos, countries flags and insignia as well as signs, general usage logos and more. We hope to provide inspiration for designers as well as become a visual guide to the pop culture behind brands. You can either view the logos alphabetically by clicking on the category links or do a search for a specific brand. Continue reading
How to Create a Logo
Your logo is a visual representation of everything your company stands for. But many companies still skimp on developing this key identity piece.
Ideally, your company logo enhances potential customers and partners’ crucial first impression of your business. A good logo can build loyalty between your business and your customers, establish a brand identity, and provide the professional look of an established enterprise. With a little thought and creativity, your logo can quickly and graphically express many positive attributes of your business, too.
There are basically three kinds of logos. Font-based logos consist primarily of a type treatment. The logos of IBM, Microsoft and Sony, for instance, use type treatments with a twist that makes them distinctive. Then there are logos that literally illustrate what a company does, such as when a house-painting company uses an illustration of a brush in its logo. And finally, there are abstract graphic symbols? such as Nike’s swoosh?that become linked to a company’s brand.
Before you begin sketching, first articulate the message you want your logo to convey. Try writing a one-sentence image and mission statement to help focus your efforts. Stay true to this statement while creating your logo. Here are some tactics and considerations that will help you create an appropriate company logo:
Look at the logos of other businesses in your industry.
Focus on your message. Decide what you want to communicate about your company. Does it have a distinct personality?serious or lighthearted?
Make it clean and functional. A good logo should be scalable, easy to reproduce, memorable and distinctive. Icons are better than photographs. And make sure that logo can be reproduced in black and white.
Your business name will affect your logo design.
Use your logo to illustrate your business’s key benefit.
Don’t use clip art. However tempting it may be, clip art can be copied too easily. Not only will original art make a more impressive statement about your company, but it’ll set your business apart from others.
Logo trends 2005
Since the logo is integral part of a brand (but, of course keeping in mind what Dustin said logo does not create the brand it merely encapsulates it, symbolizes it) LogoLounge.com published the Third Annual Visual Trends Report.
The word “trend” seems to raise the little hairs on the back of some designers’ necks. Everybody wants to be a you-know-what-setter; no one wants to acknowledge the aftermath.
Trends are not an accusation of some widespread lack of original thinking. Instead, they are a sign of design evolution in our ever-shrinking world.
Think of them as confirmation that designers are excellent thermometers/barometers of human thinking the world-round. That there are corollaries should be no surprise. So we note trends with these caveats:
1. Are these trends on the way in or the way out? We do not presume to suggest one or the other.
2. Do trends tell you where to go or, conversely, where not to go? Again, that is for you to decide
Consider those 15 logo trends (folly stars, amalgams, blow out, cmyk, flames, wicker balls, weaves, whips, puffies, line dots, good drops, leaf life, blur, swirlys, hot dogs) and discover new directions. But remember: With any trend, it is better to realize how you arrived than to know you have arrived.
What’s in a logo?
Logos can be one of the most effective tools for marketing and branding any business, from restaurants to retail shops. They are visually representations of a company, its image and its philosophy. And they make both the first and often most lasting impression on consumers.
But they can be costly.
Customers are color blind
In today’s e-commerce age, where everyone is forced to type and to remember names with absolutely correct spellings, companies with big branding campaigns only hurt themselves with their old-fashioned, painted, colorful advice.
The use of color as a name or to identify a corporation is far too stretched. The customer, at large, is somewhat color blind to these branding tactics. Customers are already recovering from the awkward, dumb and, at times, obscene names from the wild branding era of the last dot.com bubble: PurpleFrog, PurpleCow, PurpleDog, PurpleRhino, all the way to BlueFrog, BlueCow, BlueDog, BlueRhino, etc. These poor animals were subjected to much verbal abuse and named in just about every color of the rainbow, almost creating possible strikes at the local zoo.
How people remember your brand/logo?
A very interesting experiment attempts to evaluate the actual power of brands by making Austrian people draw a total of twelve logos (nine international, three typically European) from memory, 25 people per brand. Salut, share of mind!
Brands of the World
Brandsoftheworld.com is World’s one of the most visited web sites intended for browsing and exchange of the World’s famous brand-logos. The primary use of site is to enable designers to access vector-forms of the well-known brand-logos that they can use in their presentations, given the permission of the copyright owner. The web site also enables designers to upload their own works and professional details.