“Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder”. A very common statement that has everything to do with the subjective conditionality of one person’s attraction for something different from another person. Unfortunately, this subjective yardstick has been brought into the realm of logo design. This is one major reason for so many poorly made logos out there, indeed logos that won’t yield results. More so, logos that won’t be successful, and by consequence built by a mindset that will enable the failure of the business at becoming a brand.
So are you a person, entrepreneur or designer that judges or justifies the appropriateness of a logo from the stand point of beauty? Well, this is wrong and this thinking requires emancipation. A logo has no business been beautiful – you might as well be adding mascara, blush and Kylie lipstick in the similar ways some logos are burdened with graphic elements in a bid to achieve beauty as the sole aim. The important question is, do you know What Makes A Successful Logo? This is the question this article intends to answer. The answer is what big brands have the privilege to know and you should too because it’s the reason their logos work tremendously for them.
First off, A logo is a symbol or identifying mark that conveys origin, identity, or ownership. The main function is to elicit recognition. The objective of a logo is to act as a mnemonic device and identifier, to communicate a desired thought or feeling, and to generate a desired emotional response. A thought-provoking logo design can strengthen your brand image and corporate identity, giving you a psychological advantage over your competition. Your logo is the core of your corporate identity, defining and symbolizing the character of your company or organization.
Founding partner of Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv; Tom Geismar, the design genius behind the logo for numerous famous companies and institutions, including: Xerox, Univision, National Geographic, Mobil Oil, Princeton University Press, the United Nations Development Programme – offers three basic criteria for a successful logo design:
1. Appropriate: Good fit for the business;
2. Distinctive: Stands out and easy to recognize and memorize;
3. Flexible: Works in different sizes by maintaining clarity and suitable in various contexts;
So for a logo to be appropriate, it means the logo is made out of salient ethos of the business. To be distinctive refers to a logos unique design that ensures the logo is attributed easily to only one company, as such it doesn’t share any similarity to any other business and at the same time, it is made in such a way that as soon as the logo is sighted, even a very short glimpse, it is instantly memorized as one harmonious idea. Simplicity or minimalist is at the core of this attribute. When a logo is flexible, this means it is scalable, especially to a very small size without loosing visibility or the clarity of its feature(s).
A logo specialist does not set out on a logo work to achieve beauty neither is the judgement of a logo premised on this subjective parameter. The benefits of the aforementioned criteria is what successful brands have as an advantage, having acquired it from committing their most important visual asset into the hands of specialists.
Written by Dayo Abiola – Chief Design Officer of Dayo Abiola – Nigeria’s foremost logo making company.