How To Choose The Right Type Of Logo For Your Situation
3 Situations I’ve Identified Clients Are In.
Situation #1: I’ve Only Been In Business A Few Months.
Prospect: “So I did a design of this logo for my business. This is the name (enter name X). I just need you to clean it up for me. I find it looking blurry. Um…it’s a purple logo.”
…proceeds to explain the inspiration behind the color of the blurry logo.
Me: “At what time did you factor in your industry and the client when you decided on the color purple?”
Prospect: “Ummm…I read your article on color eh but (uncomfortably laughs), I just like that color.”
Me: “…And the logo mark?”
Prospect: “What about it?”
Me: “…what did you base the design off of?”
Prospect: “What do you mean?”
…proceeds to explain the inspiration behind the logo mark.
Me: “OK, so the mark represents the meaning of your name. Well that’s not how it works. Brand marks or pictorial marks are usually based on the brand’s identity or what the brand does.”
Prospect: “Ohh. Well yuh could build de brand off of what I’ve designed?”
Me: “No. You’ll be coming at it from the wrong direction. You don’t establish a brand with the logo: Your brand is not your logo. You establish the brand first and you create the visual brand after.”
Prospect: “So I’m not ready for a logo?”
Me: “How long have you been in business?”
Prospect: “A few months”
Me: “🥴…no, you’re not ready for a logo.”
I understand the peer pressure that comes with putting your services on social media. Seeing people in your industry with a logo for their profile picture can stimulate desire and make you a little desperate. You don’t know most of those marks have nothing to do with their brand message, you don’t know most of those people don’t even know what their brand’s message is. All you see is a cool design they like “very very much”.
If you’re in the testing phase with your services, you can’t possibly commit to a brand identity just yet. That said, you’ll save yourself $300 by simply creating a font logo on Canva.
Situation #2: I’m Low-key Entertaining A ReBrand.
Me: …Applied for a job.
Companies in Trinidad and Tobago low-key crowdsource talent to get free work. They assume no one is observing this but …ummm, when there is no point in “testing my design skills” if I’ve already submitted a portfolio….what else can you be doing?
CEO: “Congratulations on being shortlisted! You have 3 days to redesign the company logo to help us make our final decision.”
If you’re entertaining a rebrand, design alone doesn’t comprise conceptualizing a logo. I’ve learned over the years that other aspects like research and rethinking new ways of putting something original and authentic together are the most time consuming and important parts of logo design. Very rarely do you find clients who understand the depth of their brand’s message and what level they wish to communicate or the type of logo they need and be spot on. And yet still, the designer needs to do their part to be sure.
So, with no time to meet with the CEO to go over these things, I knew this wasn’t the right fit and withdrew my application.
If you plan on putting your logo on tech items, symbols or monograms logos are what’s common in such scenarios. Anyone can lookup “futuristic typeface”, pair it with a tech symbol and call it a logo. But if you want to differentiate yourself from other companies, you need to infuse deeper levels of meaning into the logo.
Situation #3: I Have A Logo I Like…I Just Need It To Go With My New Brand And Website.
Me: “Do you need a logo?”
CEO: “No, we already have a logo.”
Me: “Kindly send it to me please. I will need an AI version of it for the project.”
CEO: “Hmmm, I’ll need to track down the person who designed it. AI you said?”
Me: “Yes. Not JPG, or a screenshot of it from Facebook. The original file.”
Two months pass and nothing.
CEO: “I finally got a hold of him. Here is the AI file you asked for.”
…I notice it’s fluorescent green but her brand color is citibank blue.
Me: “OK, thanks.”
All I can say is I’ve experienced another aspect of the power of branding. A good brand can truly make an ugly logo look like it was hatched out of a moment of inspiration. But living in Trinidad and Tobago, I know better — Logos are created purely on the foundation of aesthetics. And these days most service providers are either shopping at the business toolkit or using the same software because all the logos have the same look and feel to them. But I digress.
When you’ve successfully provided your services to over 500 clients, you’re not someone testing the waters, so you have a responsibility to the value your services provide to seek out the right type of help you need to reflect it. That way you don’t make mistakes like ‘starting your brand with your logo’, only to have it not align with the brand’s message leaving you feeling stuck committed to something that isn’t working.
Depending on your industry, combination marks (the word mark together with a pictorial icon) will be the best type of logos for you. Examples of industries that use combination marks are the fashion industry, the automobile industry, the fast food industry, sports clothing industry and the insurance industry to name a few.
I am the Founder and Visual Brand Strategist at The BrandTUB
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