I Do Not Need a Logo…
What’s a Logo?
A logo is a graphic (illustration, usually) that is designed to represent your company. Designing one is one of the most crucial elements as you launch or realign your firm. Your logo can be your visual “bookmark” in a customer’s mind, and should suggest all of your firm’s Purpose whether your name is beside it or not. the best logos are timeless, clean, evocative reminders which instantly bring the desired associations to mind: Nike’s swoosh, Apple’s… apple, Playboy’s bunny. Even the flag of your country is often used in this way. They need no words, yet in the best of all worlds, you know what they represent and why.
Why Don’t I Need One?
Even with oodles of money for research and development, logo design debacles litter the corporate world (Xerox and the London Olympics have recently caused plenty of controversy). With piles of cash, logo designs and redesigns can fail spectacularly. You, my smaller-business reader, do not want to throw piles of cash out your window. So you don’t need a logo.
How Will Anyone Remember Me?
Oh, you do need a memorable visual marker, but it does not have to be a logo. A well-executed wordmark is far more important than a meaningless or missed-the-mark logo.
What’s a Wordmark?
Glad you asked. A wordmark is your company’s name, in its unique, standalone type treatment, which you will always use in the same standardized way. You will not tweak it, stretch it, color it differently in different media, or wrap the words differently to suit the size of the space you’re working with. You won’t do that, right?
Your wordmark will be filled with your Vision; it will be exceptional and intriguing. It will make me think only of you. Still don’t get it? How about FedEx, Yahoo!, and Coca-Cola. Can you picture the colors, style, and typeface of each wordmark?
When you use your wordmark, everywhere, in the exact same way, it will become that visual hook you need.
Can’t I Please Have a Logo?
Yes, you may. Be warned, it is much harder than it looks to get a good one, and much easier than you’d think to get something that doesn’t make you any money. I want your business to grow! If your name is the most important ad you’ll ever write, then your choice of logo, wordmark, or the combination of logo and company name (called a logotype) has a lot to do with how many eyeballs will recall seeing that most important ad.
Last word: Skip the Swooshes, the Ovals, the Mascots—Please!
Grow and be well,
Kelly Erickson
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2 February 2008, 8:53 am
Kelly,
I remember the Olymic logo FUBAR! I had to ask my UK friends what the hell they were thinking on that one.
As a graphics person myself, I agree not everyone needs to have a logo in the traditional sense. For our own blogs (JCM Enterprises and our soon to be released new blog) I didn’t create a specific logo at all.
I’ll remember your blog too. I told James it’s so cheery it reminds me of orange juice. Nice choice of colors and layout here.
2 February 2008, 9:29 am
Well, the BrainStorm logo at the top is VisionPoints’ own (since you didn’t ask, our “about this logo” is here), but I can’t take credit for the theme.
I wanted to remain true to our Purpose but riff off it. The theme began as Soleil by Carrie Petri.
I code just well enough to be dangerous, so I’ve tweaked the CSS significantly, but when I was considering a blog I wanted to be up and running quickly, without learning blog-specific intricacies, and Soleil was a perfect compliment to VisionPoints’ main site.
Thanks for looking in!
Kelly
10 February 2008, 11:30 am
Completely agree. I think with the advent of the Internet, names are much more important than visual logos now. That said, if someone wants to play around with the idea and has a little graphic skills, it can be fun and instructive to try and shrink a business down to a visual “sound byte”. I’ve done it with several different business interests and have actually embraced and actively use one of them on labels, letterhead, etc. to good effect. But that was the exception.
10 February 2008, 2:06 pm
Thanks for checking in, Meg.
As a professional Designer I must confess that the idea of playing around with ideas, with a little graphic skills, wounds me slightly. It’s been discussed at a fever pitch around the Internet, so I’m not going to go there.
As a realist, and as a professional who helps smaller businesses grow, I recognize that this is exactly what happens all the time. Here at the MCE Blog, I am an advocate for the strongest possible research and strategy behind any design, whether professionally commissioned or not, and I think we can all train our eyes to understand better work when we see it, coming from our own desktop or someone else’s.
Just to be clear: to me, there’s nothing to say a Designer (paid or dabbling) must have been to University or have seventeen years of agency experience to have been handed the seeds of knowledge. Some people have a keen eye and are sharp strategists without any of that. Maybe it’s in the genes. Go, DIYers!
Unprofessional gobbledegook that won’t produce results is created both by individuals—and by people who get paid to do it—every day.
I think this will get me in trouble equally with everyone.
: )
Regards,
Kelly
13 February 2008, 7:55 am
Hi Kelly,
Many thanks for your recent comments on my blog. Very much appreciated.
I disagree that a logo is usually an illustration.
Illustrations are too complex to be used as an identifier, and there’s a big difference between graphic design and illustration.
I also believe a logotype to be the wordmark, so if you’re using your name alone, without a symbol, you still have a logotype (the kerning, colour, typeface etc. are all representative of your identity and should be chosen carefully).
13 February 2008, 10:21 pm
David,
Good to hear from you. The definitions I gave above are the ones I commonly use in everyday speech (of course we all go around saying “wordmark” in everyday speech, don’t we?). Before I finalized the post, I checked with a couple of resources (books I’ve got around and Wikipedia, online), to make sure I hadn’t been messing with my terminology too much or getting sloppy over the years.
I feel pretty good about these definitions so I’m going to respectfully stand behind them.
I would like to clarify one bit: when I said “a logo is a graphic (illustration, usually)…” I meant as opposed to a photographic image, which you see occasionally but thankfully not often. Most overly illustrative logos are a big mistake—a rant for another day—but there are some who can pull them off beautifully: Leslie Cabarga, Tom Nikosey, and Louise Fili, for instance.
BTW: Anyone who is getting a kick out of the semantics of logo terminology here should run don’t walk to David Airey’s new blog, Logo Design Love, to the post that won’t die, When Is a Bad Logo Design Actually Good?, and particularly, to the lively comments on that post (don’t miss Frank’s comment, which is as fresh as it is timeless).
Thanks for checking in, David, and making me own my words!
Regards,
Kelly