Is Logo Design Important?
A logo is to a business as your face is to you, so why not make it a great logo.
It is how you are recognised, it reflects your personality, or in case of your business, your values and principles. It can also be the most powerful marketing tool known.
Logo design establishes your identity.
It is very hard to establish yourself in the marketing world without one. In layman’s terms, a logo is like a mental shortcut to a product or company. Just how often do you recognize a car from its make, rather than the emblem on the bonnet?
The power of the logo lies in its visual nature. Studies have shown that people recognize and relate to images faster then text. In today’s world of multimedia, this rings truer than ever before.
Having just any logo, however, is not enough to create a brand identity for you. A badly thought up logo can very easily destroy the image of your company. On the other hand, a carefully designed logo can reach the buying public and communicate to them the worth of your company or product. Therefore, everything depends on the design of your logo.
Think about the Olympic rings, the apple with the bite taken out or the golden arches for the popular you-know-who fast food chain.
This type of instant recognition is the holy grail for a business, but ultimately incredibly rare.
Which is why the world’s multinational companies can spend millions on their logos – like UK oil group BP, which back in 2000 spent £136m introducing its current sunflower design.
Other firms of a similar size, whose logo is simply their name written out in a stylised way, can spend hundreds of thousands on a new font, or a different colour.
Back in autumn 2010, GAP decided to change their immediately recognisable brand of upper cased letters and font to lower case with a blue square.
Such was the public outcry that a week later Gap did an about turn and scrapped the change.
Mr Haviv says: “Gap’s original logo was loved by its audience, but it didn’t know it.”
Alternatively, companies have made a success of their re-branding. A new logo can have the effect of breathing new life into an old brand. September last year, Google in-house redesign was launched after 17 years of using basically the same logo. The tech giant’s distinctive new look is cleaner, fresh while remaining true to its distinctive brand.
In essence, your logo can succinctly summarise your company’s values, growth, and brand. A great logo, for obvious reasons, can only take you so far. Ultimately people do not assess the strength of your company on your logo, but rather on its quality of service and product. The real business-ey things still matter more.
But an amazing signpost for your company can only help, right?