Mistakes Made When Deciding On A Logo

Few elements of a brands identity are as critical, yet so misleadingly simple, as a logo. After choosing a name, creating a logo of significance or brand-appropriate, probably one of the first things a small business owner or marketing company launching or relaunching a company or product will do. While it is easy to begin selling your product or service, it’s so easy to skip steps, cut corners, move fast, and fall prey to some common oversites

Here are some of those oversites and how to avoid them.

Choosing colours based on personal preferences.

How colour influences individuals may differ depending on age, gender, and culture.

Individual colours, and colour combinations, have the power to evoke different emotional experiences and reactions in your customers. Understanding the psychology of colour should play a key role in your logo design.

Blue instils confidence and calm, yellow and orange spark youthful energy and enthusiasm, violet/purple authority, sophistication, power, just three examples.

However, evidence from surveys shows that over 65% of small business owners admit that “personal taste and preference” was the single most significant factor in choosing colours for their logos. Avoid this trap and think about the emotional connection you want consumers to have with your brand; choose your logo colours accordingly.

Skipping the important work of defining your brand before engaging a designer.

Before even engaging with a designer, part of the process is choosing logo colours according to projections of your target customers and what responses you hope to elicit from them.

To skip multiple time-consuming (and let’s be honest) costly iterations, invest the time to define your overall brand strategy.  What do you stand for (mission, core values), your differentiation and market positioning, and of course, your target audience. Answering these questions will help create a blueprint from which all the individual brand identity elements will flow. It is challenging to develop in a vacuum, and this will help your designer come up with the most creative ideas.

Think about how your logo will look on different media and platforms.

Logos are not a simple, standalone element you will print on a business card or perhaps see in the corner of your website. A logo needs to translate and communicate to your key audiences across mobile, social, packaging, outdoor and much more. In recent years, companies such as Instagram, Pandora, Facebook, LinkedIn, plus many more, including governments and local services, needed to create mobile app icons instantly recognizable for users on a touchscreen.

Falling into the “trendy” trap.

While it is important to be aware of design trends when choosing a logo, staying current, modern and avoiding an outdated look helps inspire consumer confidence in your brand.

However, it is all too easy to fall into the trap of following current trends blindly, meanwhile losing the equally critical attribute for most brands of timelessness. Your logos should have a longer shelf life than other elements of your brand identity, such as packaging or even a website.

Your logo will have a quality that pulls everything together into a cohesive look and feel in an ideal world. However, too trendy, and you risk looking dated sooner than you’ll necessarily want to reinvest in a makeover or maybe even a total and expensive rebrand and redesign.

For example, consider some of the most recognizable retail, media and consumer brands whose logos have changed little if at all over the past several decades, such as Nike, Marks and Spencer’s, Harrod’s, Mercedes, Shell, the BBC and Channel 4.

Being a copycat.

There is certainly nothing wrong with taking inspiration from brand elements of companies and products you admire as a starting point when working with a logo designer. There is, however, a fine line between inspiration and imitation.

Stay in touch with your competitors also industry leaders. What are they doing to succeed, but don’t be attached to ideas that miss the opportunity for you to capitalize on your unique attributes with the creative help of a designer?