A successful logo design is a visual representation of your brand, your ethos, your persona and reputation, all in one quick hit. It’s what your users look at to form a snap judgment about who you are, what you do, and how well you do it. That’s a lot to get across without getting noisy or confusing. So, you can see how simplifying a visual mark down to it’s true essence could take a fair bit of energy and skill. But when there’s a million other things to be investing in for your business, why is this important?
Visual Branding
Humans are incredibly visual beings, and thus are attracted to and remember visual marks more often than words or phrases. This human quality is a shorthand of sorts for organizing memories, to the point where specific parts of our brain are dedicated to rapid pattern recall. The flipside being that if you have a busy and confusing logo, no easy pattern forming will happen, and your user could leave your site quickly and not even realize why.
Just think of some of the top brands and the amount of energy they put towards creative and their logos? The real successful ones, such as Nike, Adidas, Starbucks, Disney’s Mickey Mouse and Apple, don’t even have to include the name of their company to achieve quick and easy brand recognition.
Bad Design Costs More
With the age of $0.99 logos on the internet, why invest? Well, as the saying goes, you get what you pay for. And when paying less than a dollar for something, you’re getting something that is at best a slight derivative of everything else that’s floating around on the internet. Is that the mark you want to be distinguishing you from your competition? No, probably not.
While a bad logo design can be frustrating or boring, is also can be expensive. And there are ways in which it’s impact on your business can be measured. In 2014 and 2015 there were two back-to-back studies on the impact of design done by Motiv Strategies and the Design Management Institute. Defined as the Design Index, it measured how companies that placed a high value on design performed versus companies who placed a low value on design performed. The results were significant. The design-centric organizations beat the S&P index by 228 percent.
What if You Just Can’t
Okay, so you’re convinced of a logo’s importance in your brand marketing, but you absolutely just can’t afford it right now. The next best thing is investing a temporary stand in logo. One that will most likely be a simple understated typeface and will almost just stand in the background and say nothing. Better to be understated and (temporarily) not say much than to be loudly communicating the wrong sloppy thing. Then as soon as you can, invest in a proper logo development and roll out.
In Conclusion
Logos are the backbone of your branding identity that can work to create a clear and concise visual pattern that our brains want to see. Don’t make your users work for it! This consistency and brand coherence will create confidence and trust from the audience’s perspective. And from an internal perspective, this upfront work will make it easier for you to keep a visual consistency throughout your brand for any future growth you have.