How to Breathe New Life into Your Brand with the Perfect Logo
A brand logo is something that helps you identify a brand – an arrangement of colors, shapes, and designs, right? Well yes, but a logo is so much more as well. A logo announces your brand, it tells a story and creates a connection with your ideal customers. Think about a brand’s logo the same way that you would think about a country’s flag and you will see how important it is – as a symbol and an identity marker representing a community. While the right logo can enhance and elevate your brand to help create brand loyalists, the wrong logo will literally suck the life out of your brand.
The logo is the main symbol of a beloved brand.
A logo can evoke joy, comfort, familiarity, and belonging. It is able to arouse emotions – wordlessly and instinctively. Recall to mind some of the logos that are most beloved to you – just the images – and it is easy to understand their power. The red and white KFC logo, with the smiling face of Col Sanders, will instantly evoke a sense of a satisfying meal, perhaps tied up with childhood memories of meals with friends or family. The Starbucks logo instantly brings to mind the rich aroma of coffee wafting from a stylish, inviting store where you’ve probably spent many happy hours. The Apple logo makes us think of technology, style, connecting to loved ones, and so much more.
Over time, each of the well-known and beloved brands have visually evolved and transitioned in ways that show us the right way for logos to evolve. The Adidas logo used to be a detailed and complex one, which is now just that characteristic simple but clearly identifiable sphere with the three lines running through it. Burger King had a busy, complicated logo that was later pared down, as were logos of Starbucks, Apple, Microsoft, and so many others. The way that these logos evolved, has valuable lessons for us to learn.
The 5 essentials for creating a great brand logo.
If there is one common thread in the way that great brand logos have undergone changes and been recreated it is this: they have gradually become simpler, more stylized, less cluttered, and clearer. While some of the most essential elements remain – like the red and white color scheme and Col Sanders’ face for KFC – unnecessary details are pared down, even eliminated. This gives us our first important clue – simplicity. While retaining its essential character and the strongest markers of identity, logos should be direct, strong, simple, and elegant.
The second important thing is to make your logo arresting and eye-catching. It can be subtle, with an understated color scheme – like the playful lettering and the pastel pinks and blues of a Baskin Robbins. Or it can be bold with bright, contrasting colors such as Pepsi. Either way, it catches attention and warrants a second look. Those colors forever become associated with that particular brand in the consumer’s head. Uniqueness is another important aspect of a brand logo. Not only do you want a logo to be distinctive and unmistakable in terms of identifiability, but you also don’t want the headache of being sued for copyright infringement by some other brand. A symmetrical design and a clear brand story are other aspects of creating a great brand logo as I explain here. Watch now to find out how you can transform your logo into something memorable and beloved rather than something that sucks the life out of your brand.