Logo design is an important area of graphic design.The logo is the image embodying an organization. Logos are meant to represent companies brands or corporate identities and foster their immediate customer recognition.
Your brand is your perceived corporate image as a whole. This is your brand mission, vision, story, and brand strategy, all wrapped together. If you?re struggling to get your head around what your brand is, and how you begin to form your brand, then take a look at The Ultimate Small Business Branding Guide. It?s packed full of tips and advice for branding your business.
Your brand identity is the visual representation of your overall brand. It?s how your brand communicates visually.
And sure, your logo design is part of your brand identity, but there?s more to it than that. It?s the language you use, the typographic choices you make, the style of photography in your brand communication, and more.
When you work with a design agency to help design and develop your brand, they should wrap up your brand identity in a document, often called Brand Identity Guidelines.
This can then be used when working with others to help communicate your brand visually.
Building trust and recognition with your audience and customers can play a major part in your businesses success.
When you put your logo on something, you?re officially giving it ?the seal of approval.? And just like film critics, food critics, and other reviewers, that means something.
By having your logo design on something, you?re guaranteeing it lives up to the promise your brand has made, and your customers can trust it.
People recognise logos. And that?s one of the major things your logo design should do for you. Build recognition and trust.
Think about Nike?s logo. It appears everywhere, and you know what it is every time.
Your logo needs to do the same for your customers.
Away from naming your company different things, your logo design helps you differentiate from your competition.
Think about McDonalds vs Burger King. Two widely known and recognised burger chains.
Whilst Burger King have the better burgers (that?s right, you heard me!), McDonald?s arguably have the more successful logo.
I bet you can think of the McDonald?s logo in your head right now. The Burger King logo however could be a little fuzzy.
For reference, here they are:
The Golden Arches win out every time. You know what they are. The logo makes me smell McDonald?s chips (fries), and makes me want to jump into my car and head out to get one.
And that?s because?
McDonald?s logo wins out, because it visually represents the brand in the most basic form possible.
The Golden Arches form an M, the first letter in McDonald?s. However, the fact ?the arches? are golden, reminds you of fries. Then the smell, then the desire. The whole logo conjures up thoughts of the brand.
They?ve used their logo to simply represent their brand.
And because of that, they have one of the most successful logos of all time.
For the record, I?m not the biggest fan of McDonald?s, but you can?t argue with the strength of their brand, brand identity, and logo design.
