Grow Your Business

The logo is the most visible part of a company’s brand identity, and yet it is often overlooked and not given much importance by a lot of corporate planners and strategists. How important is it? We know that the silhouette of an apple with a bite on its right side is the logo of the most profitable company in the world, Apple Inc.; that a “swoosh” that looks like a check mark represents Nike; and that a mermaid within a circle is for Starbucks Coffee.

Creating a logo, however, isn’t just putting together abstract symbols to make it unique for your company. As blogger and digital branding expert John Lasurdo says, a logo “should provide a clear message with a strong association towards your brand.”

“A good logo does not have to explain itself,” says Chito Arabaca, a creative director for a multinational bank’s publishing arm. A poorly designed logo can undermine brand identity, he explains, since logos are a summation of what a company is about, its values and vision. “A good logo should be able to stand on its own, even when not accompanied by the company name or a marketing tagline.”

 
What are the elements of a good, effective logo?

1. It is easily remembered. “An average person should be able to describe your logo,” says Arabaca. Therefore, a logo should be simple but not abstract. Remember: the primary goal of a logo is to enable customers to recall your brand easily, not to arouse curiosity.

“A good logo should be able to last 20 or 30 years,” he adds. While some logos can evolve over time, the good ones never fundamentally change, like the peacock plume of the US television network NBC or the mermaid of Starbucks, which recently did away with the words around its logo.

“When people have made a connection to your logo, it would be disastrous to change it radically,” Arabaca explains. “You can slightly tweak the color, do away with some elements, but the fundamental framework that made your logo and your brand memorable should basically remain the same.”

 

2. It should be scalable. Some companies, or the designers they hire to develop their collaterals, tend to put too much detail on the logo that when you scale it down to 30 pixels for a website, some important details become too miniscule to be noticed. Arabaca, who has been a graphic designer for 10 years, has encountered logos that had intricate details in them that became undistinguishable when scaled down. On the other hand, the logo should still look good when blown up, for a billboard for instance.

“A logo should be simple enough that it can be distinguished by the consumer at any size,” Arabaca stresses.

 

3. Pick and use colors judiciously. A logo should be effective even with one color. Starbucks’ mermaid is primarily in green, Apple’s logo is usually in black or white, and Nike’s swoosh is officially colored orange, but it can also be hued black or white depending on the need. Logos can have various colors, but its framework should be flexible enough to work in monochromatic schemes. However, a logo with a single color is more advantageous and practical because it is cheaper and easier to reproduce at any scale, in any medium.

 

4. The logo design should have a relevant connection to the company. A logo, of course, should have a connection with the company and what it does. “It should talk about the company. It should be relevant to its goals and vision,” Arabaca says. “However, it does not necessarily mean that your logo should depict exactly what the company does or what it sells. For example, if you are in the food business, your logo does not have to be a spoon and a fork.”

Arabaca cites Apple’s logo, which does not have computers, music players, or phones on it. But if you dig through the company’s history, you’ll find out that Isaac Newton—whose scientific theories made the falling apple famous—was a common inspiration among its founding members. In fact, Apple’s first logo was a picture of Newton underneath a tree, with an apple hanging over his head.

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