What Makes a Good Logo?
Welcome to the world of branding and the importance of a logo that represents who you are and what you do as a business.
Yes it's important that your logo is linked to your business, but does that mean a fruit shop needs to have a piece of fruit in it's logo like we've been told in the past?
Have you noticed that the biggest brands and their logos don't always have a graphic of what their business does! McDonalds is a capital M, and it has nothing to do with food, just as the brand 'Big M' also has a capital M in a different colour and shape which is not a picture of flavoured milk. They are both relatively the same logo, and yet we know the difference and assign different feelings and thoughts to both.
Think about Apple, Nike or Mercedes ... do their logos represent what they sell? No they don't, yet if we saw their logo today, then 9 out of 10 of us would have brand awareness to know what they actually do sell. Just as if we thought of their name, then we would know the visual attached to it.
As a smaller business and/or company, why is it that we get so caught up in the logo process and trying to pick the 'right one' and the one that visually matches our business.
Now before we go further, I would like to add that not all graphics are created equal by any shot. There are a lot of logos and graphics that are unappealing to the eye and won't draw in customers. This issue is about how we judge and perceive the world from first glance. We can say 'don't judge a book by it's cover', yet we are doing it all day. Our brains receive so much information that they need a way to quickly decide what's relevant and what is not. So if your logo is unappealing, then peoples brains will repel it instantly.
Back to the bigger brands, the key to brand awareness is not the logo itself, instead it is around repetition. They spend a large portion of their income on advertising so that you see their logo and their name over and over again so that if it was initially repelled, then the brain will eventually have to take notice, because the brain also likes patterns, if you see something often, no matter what it is, it will start to assume that it's important to you.
So then, if you are in the process of starting a new business or re-branding an existing business, how do you choose a logo?
The key is simplicity. Does it have colours that don't clash, is there graphics, but not too many. You want images to draw emotions and words to draw in the mind - a mix of both is appealing to the senses. Colours also have their own magnetic appeal and so matching your brand personality to colour can be important. Red is a strong colour, and a softer spoken naturopath would be recommended to stay away from it, whereas a metal band would be encouraged to use it.
Creating a few options is the best way to be drawn into the logo that fits. It needs to be something that both you and your customer are both drawn to.
Once you have the image, it's important to hold it for a decent period of time and not change it often, as you loose any energy that has been building up in it, with yourself and customers attaching emotions and thoughts to that particular image. If these are positive, then you can build up quite a strong 'magnet' within attraction marketing in a short period of time.
And then the next step will be how you utilise your logo and how you get it out into the world so that the most amount of people have a chance to interact with it.
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