Corporate Logo Blog

A logo is to a business what clothes are to an individual. You have to wear it ! That's how you are being seen in the marketplace. People say "First impressions last" - so make sure your first impression is a good one.

In the not so distant past logos used to be specially crafted typefaces sometimes incorporating a graphic element. They were strictly black and white and sometimes played on optical illusions where some white space became itself an element of the design because of its surrounding borders.

Today with the advent of colour, logos have become like a corporate coat of arms rather than a corporate stamped signature. This is a trend and I suppose you have to go along with the fashion of the day but ask yourself : Do you really have to use all the colours of the rainbow just because you are paying for full colour printing?

Can your logo be used for embroidery on garments ? How does it come out in black and white when transmitted through a fax machine ? Does your logo provide the same instant recognition blown up large as signwriting on a panel van or shrunk down like a postage stamp for a cassette label?

You can do some logo animation for the web and for audio visuals on DVDs. With such a wide range of applications the challenge is to maintain the same corporate look across the board. The worst thing you can do is to use one logo one place and another somewhere else. It destroys your identity. It makes people feel you are unreliable with no well defined corporate goals. Yes some large banks and telcos have changed their logos recently but they did it all at once and at great expense.

Some business owners make the mistake of having a vote with their staff to pick from a selection of logo designs. You will end up with as many points of view as there are voters. What matters is how people perceive you out there in the marketplace and how you stand out from your competitors.

Add Comment

Computer generated graphics come in two flavours: raster images (also called bitmaps) and vector images. They both coexist because they are each required for different applications. It is quite easy to translate a vector graphic into a bitmap but quite tedious to generate a vector graphic from a bitmap.

So what are the advantages, and the reasons we need both?

Bitmaps are the only way we can represent photographs electronically. They are akin to those display panels you have seen made up of light globes arrayed in rows and columns. Seen from enough distance, the eye merges their luminescence into one single image. As each lamp is turned on or off virtually any image can be displayed.

In computer lingo those "lightglobes" are called pixels. If you stare close enough with a magnifying glass to a computer or TV LCD screen you will see them. For colour they can each be either red, green or blue with up to 256 levels of intensity. The human eye does a marvellous job of integrating all that stuff and seeing things which literally don't exist (like seeing yellow when only red and green are there...)

Sounds great - so what is the catch? Why do we need vector graphics as well? The catch my friend, is called the resolution - the number of pixels we have horizontally and vertically. For a typical laptop LCD display that might be something like 1280 by 800 pixels. So far so good. Now if we want to print a beautiful photograph on glossy paper the resolution might be 300 pixels per inch which means for an A4 size page that would translate to 3500 by 2480 pixels!

Our initial image is now only a third in size of what is required. Some smart operators have had the idea of approximating each pixel of the larger canvas but some ugly distortions appear - some sort of staircase effect alongside every oblique line or boundary. Now you've got it - bitmaps are great to represent photographs but they are tied to their intrinsic resolution. You can always shrink down a bitmap without ill-effect but you cannot magnify it without ugly artifacts.

Here comes the vector graphic to the rescue, but at what cost? Vector graphics are just a list of mathematical points representing lines, circles, rectangles, Bezier curves (quadratic equations) each with their own colour and thickness. Perfectly mathematical - computers love it, it can all be boiled down to a bunch of numbers... It can be drawn at any scale with perfect precision, blown up, shrunk down, rotated, flipped to its side, etc... the catch? It is impossible to represent a photograph that way. The best you can do is to have gradients of shades which look like some airbrushed artwork. It is easy to translate a vector graphic to a bitmap of the desired resolution. The other way round requires a lot of skill and is always a manual process. You will end up with a touched up illustration - not a photograph.

Back to the issue of logo artwork. By now you've figured out that your logo needs to be printed onto anything from a postage stamp size label to a delivery van size signwriting. Because logos are graphic symbols they are best represented as vector images to ensure they remain sharp and crisp no matter the size of what they are printed on. Your corporate image depends on it.

Add Comment

Fashions come and go but a good design is meant to give you instant recognition. What are the features to look for?

Your logo must render well at whatever size.
From postage stamp size to signwriting on your delivery van, the identification with your firm must be just as strong. If you use stock typefaces or even your own variation, is it still readable real small and real big?

Your logo must standout on any background.
You cannot foretell where your logo will be featured on next. Do you need a box or outline as part of the design to make sure there is a border to delimit the logo's footprint? How does it look on a white background? Usually fine. What about a black or gray background now? What about a crosshatch pattern? Does it still stand out or does the pattern show through the blank areas?

Your logo must pass the black and white test.
We don't use fax machines anymore - email is the go. Remember some programs block images (!) the copious use of colour is the norm. What does the logo look like to someone who is colour-blind? If you convert the logo to black and white, how much of the impact is lost? Do you rely too much on some clever hues which will be impossible to render on a large range of devices? What about sticking to primary colours?

Your logo must be remembered even by someone who cannot read.
Do you use symbols or letters? Do you focus on the sound as your name is spoken or do you convey a message with a picture? Do you use a combined approach where one letter is tilted, replaced by a symbol of a near-enough shape or otherwise touched-up for special effect and attention? Logos in the 1960s were all black and white and some used a powerful visual illusion where white space around a contour caused the viewer to "fill-in the blank".

Your logo must differentiate from your competitors.
How do your competitors express their corporate identity? Don't be a me-too copycat. If they go left, make sure you go right and vice-versa. Differentiate as much as you can. Did you brief the graphic artist on the research that led to your company or trade name?

Your logo must not breach copyrights.
You might fall in love with a brilliant idea but if it's not your own, you'd better leave it alone. Creativity is the antidote to plagiarism.

Add Comment

Take a leaf from Google who celebrate a special occasion with a clever variation on their logo.

In the past when our communication was mainly on paper it was very costly to change a corporate logo. Bank mergers have cost undue amounts to revamp every branch to the new brand identity.

Not so now. On the web you can change your logo like you see fit. A revamped logo could be the trick to awaken otherwise dazed visitors to your site who tend to take things for granted. It is much cheaper than remodelling the whole website and much less risky in terms of introducing bugs or having to re-test every page.

Women like to change clothes according to their mood. Can your website put on a new look for the sake of - well, for the sake of being a bit different for a change...

Bear in mind that fashions come and go. You don't want to be seen in last year's wardrobe. Bad for the PR I heard someone whisper. A new competitor might be invading your turf. A new logo might just be the trick to gain time with your audience while you make a calculated response later.

You might have a holding company overlooking several un-related activities. A main brand for the head office will be complimented by a customized graphic. It shows each branch as distinct - yet also part of the main stream, bearing a common element.

A plain text website is boring. Web designers are always on the look out for graphic elements to enhance the page. If you don't have your daily diet of icons on the screen it seems something is wrong. Maybe it is the influence of symbolic languages like Chinese or Japanese where a symbol is an entire word aka an icon.

You might wonder if the web is making us illiterate of sorts where our eyes get caught more by icons and logos than words in the body of the text.

Whatever the reason I reckon it is time for you to change your logo. Welcome to the new look! Nothing like a bit of frivolity to whip up your corporate self-esteem. The marketing department will love you for it. Your bloggers and support base will get your attention. Your customers will take note than you're not a starch institution yet.

Your competitors will feel that you are on the move again - they may give up the pursuit. Anything is possible. In the past a new logo was the icing on the cake for a new business plan. What about doing it the other way round? First a new logo - then when everybody feels good about themselves, new creative ideas will flow...

Add Comment

Thrive or survive are the two choices these days for business proprietors. You either dominate your market niche or average into oblivion fending off a price war.

How can you make your business stand out from the crowd?

Instead of being average at everything, why not being perfect at one thing? Do something no-one else does. Or do what you are currently doing so well that nobody can copy you.

Trying a few unusual ideas

Give to get. Why not offer your expertise free of charge to the local radio station as an expert in your field.

To generate traffic to your door have a mascot in the shopping mall handout pamphlets with a map where to find your store and a redeemable voucher to give them a reason to visit you.

When you consider the cost of acquiring a new customer you will realise how important it is to generate more sales from the people who already bought from you in the past. Can you run a loyalty program? Can you remember important dates? Ask for people birthday and send them a special offer.

A satisfied customer is the best form of advertising. Can you find ways of getting those happy souls to tell their story?

How do customers perceive you?

Do you have a consistent corporate identity across the board? Does you stationary, your employees uniforms, your delivery van sign writing, your shop front all display exactly the same logo and corporate colours?

Use the back of your invoices and the surface of your packing cartons to tell your story.

Have a recorded message on your phone line for customers on hold and after-hours information.

Cross promote yourself with related businesses. If you are a shoe store - people who buy a suit next door should get an incentive to come and see you thereafter.

Eating humble pie can have a boomerang effect. If you goofed some customer service issue, offer to make it right without having a fight with the customer. In such a self-centred world people will be amazed that you went out of your way and took them at their word. Compare the small cost of taking faulty good back into stock with the price of advertising.

Teach your staff to be passionate about your (their ?) business and reward them accordingly.. Money is not the only issue. What about giving them a chance to prove themselves at something they haven't tried yet? Unless you work as a team and have a consistent approach to doing business, your good manners can be undermined by a lazy employee.

Add Comment