Logos & Branding
Branding expresses who a company is at its core—what it stands for, and what the company will consistently deliver to customers. A brand endures and permeates every facet of an organization. Logo design and branding are at the heart of a company’s identity.
A logo is a symbol for a brand—a memorable, client-facing, visual shorthand that says: “Here We Are!”
Tips for Logo Design and Branding
1. Make sure ALL the decision makers participate throughout the creative process.
2. Keep the decision making team as small as possible – three or fewer is best.
3. Articulate all important factors to be considered. Your designer should offer you a comprehensive “creative brief” to help you organize your ideas.
4. Provide the designer with examples of logos you like and examples of logos you don’t like. This will help the designer get a feel for your personal tastes.
5. Your designer should present you with multiple options which emphasize your various goals.
6. The designer should explain how each design will perform in the many sizes, applications, and contexts in which it must function.
7. Allow the designer to take you through his or her thought process before making up your mind.
8. Be opened minded throughout the presentation. You may end up liking a design or style that you weren’t sure about at first.
9. Don’t share the options with people who are not part of the decision making team, ie., co-workers, employees, relatives or customers. Those people have not been part of the process and they will tend to shoot from the hip without understanding what the team is trying to accomplish.
10. Viewing a logo for the first time is often like looking at a Rorschach test. Reactions can vary widely from person to person and the feedback can get very arbitrary or confusing.
11. It is best to allow your decision making team to go through the process from beginning to end, make a final selection and THEN reveal it to the rest of your organization.
12. Invariably, people will come to appreciate a good logo more and more over time. That’s because they will get used to seeing it in various applications and in context. Successful logos “grow” on companies and organizations and they gradually absorb and then reflect their unique meaning.