This is not some earth-shattering marketing secret. I suppose every person who starts a business thinks about a logo. The breakdown often occurs in not thinking through all of the implications of the logo. Beyond the sign on your door, your business card and your web site, where will it be used? How will it be used? Are you building some structure around its usage so you don’t end up with millions of shades of the logo? At the same time, are you building some acceptable variations so you allow some creativity?

The first step of logo development should be to design a graphic that is eye catching and is understood for what it is in a split second. Logos are typically very simple. They are meant to be identifiable at a glance. To that end, we typically start to design a logo without color. If you view the logo in black and white, you reduce it to just its graphic parts. Then you are able to do the glance test; giving it the quick look to see if you can read and understand what the logo is in a split second. This will help you identify the elements of a logo that are easy to recognize and those that are too complicated for your brain to decipher in that split second. Take a look at the variations of the UK CPA Group logo that we did early on to help the client decide on a new design. Using black and white helped the client to decide which elements of the logo they liked, which communicated quickly and what fonts made the most impact with those graphic components. After you have the black and white agreed upon, then you are ready to add color.

Make sure your logo is a mark that identifies your company and nothing more. One common mistake made by businesses is thinking they need to tell some complicated story with their logo. I have known competitors of ours that will take you through lengthy evaluations on corporate values, mission statements and directional vision and expect to design a logo that can somehow communicate all of that. There is nothing wrong with these types of  discussions, it’s just asking too much to find all of these ideas embodied in a graphic symbol as simple as a logo. I remember sitting as an observer in a focus group evaluating such a logo. The moderator kept asking, "What values does this logo communicate? What emotion do you feel when you see this logo?” No one could find any value statements or emotions in his logo examples, so he kept asking the same questions. Finally, one frustrated soul said, "I felt nothing at first, but I am starting to feel anger because I have a desk full of work to do and you won’t let me go until I express some emotion!” Corporate logos are not emotional artwork. They are not paintings of resistance during the Impressionist era. They are meant to be a mark of identification. There is a place for emotion in sales and marketing. I would contend that most of what we purchase on a consumer level is bought by appealing to emotion, but it is not in the logo. The logo is simply an identification mark. When I go into a convenience store and I see the "Hersheys”  logo by the checkout, I know I am dealing with a chocolate bar. I might have a craving, but no real emotion. And I could not give you the mission statement of the Hershey corporation no matter how long I stared at the logo on the candy bar wrapper.

  Once you have an idea of the design of the logo, two rules should apply. The first rule is standardization. There needs to be a consistency in how the logo is used. Establish a color palette. Decide what happens in single color applications, where your corporate color is not available (such as black and white print), how large proportionally the logo should be used in comparison to its background, etc. The value of a good logo is that it identifies everything that is a part of your business. Being consistent will help this.

  The second rule is to allow for some variations to happen. Most of this will come in proportions. For instance, if you print your logo on your business card, you are viewing the logo inches from your face. It should be no problem to understand the logo at that close proximity. If you put it on a sign on the outside of a building, you may need to enlarge certain elements to keep it readable at a distance.  Take a look at the UK CPA Group sign on the outside of their building. We increased the size of the text to make sure you could read it from the street. Another proportional change that can happen is when the logo is used in a tight vertical or horizontal format. For instance, most web site banners are very long and squatty, horizontal formats. A banner stand at a trade show is a very tall and narrow vertical format. Thinking through these types of variances will make your logo work in more than one situation. 

  Another place where some leeway for variations can come into play is in creativity. Have you given some creative license to the way the logo is used? Take a look at the IMI logo. We have made variations for advertising, such as the flag logo; for marketing campaigns, such as the green leaf logo; and for corporate giving, such as the education logo.  

  So when should you stick to the first rule for consistency’s sake and when should you allow for variations? Here is our general rule of thumb: stick with the first rule of standardization most of the time and make variations a rarity. If the logo is to be recognized as your distinct brand, then the rule of standardization should be in place on your web site, on your business cards, on the signage in front of your locations. Whenever you have a branded component of the business that will be seen with other, similar components, stick with the first rule of standardization. Examples would be packaging of products and fleet vehicles graphics. Take a look at the IMI decal placement that we designed for their corporate identification manual. This makes sure that all logos are consistent and placed in the same place on all vehicles. Regarding rule two, when you are dealing with a specific cause, advertising campaign or emphasis, creative variations in the logo should be acceptable as long as the components of the logo (font, graphic elements) are not eliminated or changed.
Never forget that the main job of the logo is to identify your company. This is the first rule of branding.

  Never leave the viewer guessing who they are dealing with when they look at anything associated with your company.