A local graphic designer's thoughts on logo design

A LOGO FOR BUSINESS is very often the quickest way to build a brand’s recognition and credibility. This means it’s the most effective way to make a target audience aware of your company and all that it stands for visually, rather than just relying on the company’s trading name only.

Once the logo is designed, it is how it is used that can make or break the future marketing efforts of the company that commissioned it. Companies who want a slick, easily recognisable logo must learn to see it as an investment. They will continually have to ensure that it is correctly used. The logo should be designed to provide an insight into the brand, a quick, visual rendition as to why your target market should care about you and your company. It should eventually, through constant marketing, become a symbol that reflects quality, reliability and credibility of the products and services that the company aspires to. This is where a logo and corporate identity come together and need to be ‘worked’ so that logo and company image are maintained. If the new logo ends up slapped into a Word document and used just as flippantly elsewhere, then there is almost a guarantee that it will become distorted and end up looking a very poor rendition of its designer’s original concept. If a company does not care on how the quality of  its image is perceived, then how much care will they give their to their products, services and their customers?

High expectations
Many clients nearly always want a logo that represents just about every aspect of their company in the marketplace — this is something that’s just not possible. When this is actually tried, the logo can end up as a jumbled mess of ideas without any focus whatsoever. For example, a car company’s logo doesn't have to have a car in it for it to work.

Very often, the client will expect their new logo to have the same impact as known brands. Creating a visual brand takes time and effort and just cannot be done overnight. It takes a long time for a logo to build credibility and instant brand recognition in the marketplace with its target audience. Just think – how many of the logos we instantly recognise today would be turned down? Client comments would possibly be; “too simple” and “does not show enough about what we do!” How many clients would say yes to simple logos like Nike and Apple without wanting to add just a little bit more? Nike and Apple are perfect examples of how “less is more”. But… they have developed their meaning through time and regular investment into dynamic marketing procedures. Using their logos and corporate identity are now viewed as the brand’s promise to its customers. More logos would be successful if the expectations placed on them were much more realistic.

Good logo design should:
• authentically communicate the business and what they have to offer
• be a reflection of the brand’s positioning
• show it is different from its competitors
• easy recognition at a glance
• strong, slick and creative
• be able to be used in colour, black and white, large and small

A good, well designed logo should manage all of the above in the most simplest of ways. Reflecting the value of the business and the foundations of the brand. Once the target audience has dealt with the company, the logo then becomes a badge, confirming the strength, reliability and credibility of that business. The company’s own behaviour, as well as its marketing, must then do what it can to influence these perceptions. The logo needs to become a symbol of trust that the customer can rely on regularly, proving that they are a clear advantage over their competitors.

Logos, corporate identity and branding
Once a new logo is designed, a corporate identity and branding image should be established. Guidelines on usage need to be established. This is normally in the form of a Corporate Identity Manual, designed and created by the original designer of the logo. This document should outline the correct usage of colours, style and even the fonts and their spacing etc that have been designed to work in sympathy with the logo for all of the company’s future marketing material. This manual is well worth the extra cost to the logo design. If the client switches its designer or printer then this document is invaluable to ensure that the correct image of the company is handled by anyone else. A brand is the organisation’s reputation – how consumers see it. But, even though the organisation does not fully control its brand, it can influence it. The best way to influence anything is to be consistent. So by being consistent and strict with the logo’s correct usage and adhering to the corporate identity guidelines, slowly the company’s positioning in the marketplace will rise.
 
Samples:
Some of my logo designs I have created for local businesses can be viewed by clicking here. And a case study showing logo design, stationery and van livery for a local locksmiths can be seen here.

For all forms of graphic design for print, please visit my website by clicking here.

You can also follow me on Twitter here.

How Graphic Design For Print Has Changed Over The Years

I'VE BEEN IN THE GRAPHIC DESIGN & PRINT BUSINESS SINCE 1975. After 3 years at college learning about design, typography, the printing process and bookbinding techniques, I was thrown into the fast-moving world of advertising, graphic design and print. I started at a small printers in Hertford on £18 a week! 

Over the years, my training and years in the business means that my ‘eye for detail’ when it comes to correct letter spacing in typography and the flow of text with multiple columns is spot on. Letter spacing is particularly important in the setting of headlines. Spaced correctly, it is pleasing to read and easy on the eye. This is why my logo design work is more involved than people think. My computer sets the words I type, but I always go back over headline text and kern (tighten-up individual characters to each other) the letters as this is where the human touch is needed.

Back in the late seventies, the general public did not know what a font was. Now, since computers have been around, virtually everyone knows that a font is a typeface used to set text within documents. Ordering typesetting was originally done by sending a secretary’s typed words (on a typewriter) to the typesetting company with instructions hand-written in the margin, instructing what font, size and leading (line spacing) was required. Advertising agencies even used to employ a full time ‘typographer’ to do this every day. These guys worked closely with their fellow graphic designers. All the text that needed setting was given to a compositor/typesetter by either getting the office junior to run it round on foot to the nearest typesetting company or it was sent over on the telecopier machine. It was not long after all this that the word processor replaced the typewriter, the telecopier replaced the post, the fax machine replaced the telecopier and email seems to be replacing the fax machine. When was the last time you actually faxed something? Or received one?

When I was designing work for clients back in the late seventies, visuals (mock-up layouts) were all produced by hand using coloured Magic Markers, Letraset and Rotring Pens! When those layouts were approved, (which the ad agency rep would physically take to the client to view), the final approved copy (words) would then have to be typeset by a typesetting company. Hot metal was around then. Lead type that had to be either hand-picked from a case and assembled by the skilled compositor or typesetter who could read everything back to front, or it was set on a Linotype machine. Here the operator would type on a keyboard and then ‘slugs’ of type were actually cast in molten lead and spewed out into lines to be gathered and compacted into a ‘chase’ (a metal frame holding composed type). Even then, the type had to be proofed by inking the type and taking a ‘pull’ of it all by running a roller over a sheet of paper aligned on top of the now, inked up, type slabs. Imagine the client changing a line of text to bold. The whole slug of lead had to be removed and re-cast again and replaced into the chase. Now we just highlight with the mouse and click ‘bold’.

Hot metal typesetting was soon left behind by the coming of photo typesetting. Photographic paper was typeset by photo exposure. No hot metal, no battered letters, no ink, just consistent quality typesetting. Either way hot metal or photosetting, whatever was output, this went to a ‘paste up artist’ who would cut the type up using a scalpel into manageable blocks and paste them onto a stiff board. Heading at top, text below etc using something called ‘cow gum’ - a rubber based adhesive. The whole artwork sheet (after checking) would then be marked up for colour by way of an overlaid translucent sheet with instructions of what colour went where and then the whole lot would go off to the printer to be photographed, film made, which in turn was used to make the final printing plates. A few years on and, as we all know, computers came along. When Apple Computers brought out the first desktop publishing computer, the Apple Macintosh in 1984, things really hotted up for designers, ad agencies and printers. Typesetting and block makers gradually folded and the skilled typographer was redundant and email was added to the speedy way to get work done.

But remember this - The computer is a tool. Having a computer with a publishing program does not make you a graphic designer. You need years of training linked with professional trade industry software that can do the job and output files that your printer (or web designer) can read on their computers. So don’t bother with all that, if you have a marketing project that involves design and final print, come to me; Doug at DC-Graphics in Barnet - where my training, eye for detail and years of experience will make the path between concept and completion a short and very smooth one. You can also email me direct by going here.