What makes a good logo? Creative design makes a logo great, but what basics need to be understood simply to make a good logo? You need to make your logo good before it can become great. What does this mean?

Media

The first thing that needs to be considered when designing a logo is: What media will primarily be used to transmit your message? Are you an internet company whose primary transactions will be through your website and emails? Will your logo be printed a lot? More importantly … will your logo be faxed a lot? What about t-shirts and promotional materials?

There are some amazing logos which look spectacular online which could never be faxed. Fax takes out all subtleties, all color. You may have a design which is shiny, colorful and looks super impressive on the screen. But if your logo is going to be mostly printed and faxed … then your great design looks like some barely shaped blob on paper. Not what you want to have your customers looking at on a regular basis.

Al and Laura Reis have some great logo advice in their book 11 Immutable Laws of Branding. Very simple, easy book to read, but with great ideas on how to make your brand great. A lot of the advice about logos comes from this book; I recommend you read it for more specifics on logos, and more importantly, how to really make your brand a great one.

Shape is another important consideration to take into account. If your logo is going to be put on pens and promotional material like that … well, you don’t want to have a logo that is too large in either direction. If your clients need to roll the pen to read your company’s name, you probably don’t have the best height. If you want your company’s name on a coffee mug, it should not be so long that your clients cannot see it by looking at one side of the mug without turning the mug.

Fonts

The next thing to consider is the font. There is an extremely famous company in the United States called Lord and Taylor. Al and Laura Reis use this as an example in their book, and I cannot think of a better example:




It looks like they got the message, because I could not find a picture of the “Lord + Taylor” logo without the more readable, printed version on top.

Your logo should be readable by anybody who can read the language your logo is written in. You have a fraction of a second for people to look at, read, and move on before they see someone else’s logo (current reports are that the typical person is inundated with over 3,000 advertisements a day – how do you stand out from this crowd?). If they can’t read your logo well, you have just been put into the “obscure” category … exactly where you do not want your brand to be.

Does this mean you can not have a great company without a great logo? Absolutely not, a logo is not a brand - your logo is only a representation of you and your company. You can make your logo mean great things for your clients. And at the same time you want to make a memorable, clear impression on those who are not yet your clients.

Contact BrandMade today for a free consultation of your business and your logo.

Scott Minteer
BrandMade
www.thebrandmade.com