Have you held onto the same business/company logo for years because of misplaced loyalty, or have you recently had it designed, only for someone to tell you that it just isn’t working?
As you don’t list graphic design as a skill on your CV, how will you know how to fix it? Where do you even start? Sometimes it can be helpful to identify mistakes that others have made in order to see where you’ve gone wrong.
What doesn’t work in a logo design
- The logo was designed years ago and is no longer relevant to your customer base/is not inclusive enough/is outdated/irrelevant, etc.
- The logo looks like so many other logos in your field that it doesn’t stand out from your competition and doesn’t take your unique selling point into consideration.
- The graphic designed for your brand mark has nothing to do with what your business offers or the style doesn’t match what you do.
- The graphic gives off mixed messages or tries to include too much in its design so that the overall effect is messy and confusing.
- When the logo is used quite small on collateral, its features become undistinguishable.
- The logo isn’t accompanied by a tagline, short phrase highlighting the business offering or a visual hint as to what the business entails. Unless you are a world-renowned company like Nike, Coca-Cola or Apple, you’ll need to ‘show’ what you do to an uninformed audience.
- The font/typeface is so curly, scripty or ‘busy’ that you cannot read the business name or tagline.
- No-one has been looking after your ‘brand’ so service providers have ‘abused’ it (e.g. used it on the wrong background or on top of a photo, stretched or squashed it, used it too small, interfered with the white space around it, substituted fonts for your logo font, used it in low resolution, etc.)
- The logo wasn’t designed with different platforms in mind, so that the colours appear different on web, promotional materials and print (RGB, Pantone and CMYK).
- Your family member/best friend/freelance connection designed it free of charge/for cheap. You really do get what you pay for!
How to fix your logo
Fonts should be clear, colours coordinated and harmonious (not clashing) and the tagline should leave no doubt as to what your business offers. The graphic or brand mark should be bold enough to still be impactful on a small scale, clean, current and in line with what your business sells/offers.
Logos shouldn’t stay the same – they should evolve with the business over time. Every business should be refreshing their logo every five years to keep it current and on the cutting-edge of their field of expertise.
It’s not only advisable to have a professional graphic designer or agency design your logo, but if you are a medium- to large-sized business, it’s imperative to have a corporate identity manual developed, which gives strict guidelines to service providers on how to use your logo, colours, fonts, etc. and basically safeguards your brand.
Your logo really doesn’t have to suck. Take what you’ve read to heart and get your logo designed by a professional graphic designer/agency who have experience and have your business’ best interests at heart. We’ve redesigned our own logo three times! Why not ask us for a free quote today?