When creating a logo for your business, campaign, or venture, it’s really important to remember the 4 R’s of logo design.
1. An effective logo must be easy to READ by the viewer. So often, we see logos that are too complicated and hard to read, therefore the purpose of the logo is lost. A high contrast logo with a “less is more” design is the best approach. Now, are there some examples of the successful logos that don’t abide by this approach? Yes, but those examples are few and quite often are successful because of the product quality/reputation and not the logo.
2. A successful logo must be easily Recognized by the viewer. Consumers are hit by thousands of logos daily and the last thing you want is for your logo to get lost in process. Instead, you want your target market to quickly recognize your brand in an instant. You don’t have long – maybe just milliseconds – to capture their attention and make a good impression. An easy to read and recognize logo gives you an advantage over your competition and that is most often accomplished thought effective design. Effective design doesn’t always mean bright colors or flashy fonts — but it can mean exactly that. Effective design completely takes the intended audience in mind before any design is started. Pizza restaurant logos have a different target market than landscaping logos. Obviously people that eat pizza often want a manicured lawn as well, but it’s the mindset and expectation that has to be considered when designing a logo.
3. What logos do you Remember? Campbells Soup, Nike, ATT, Apple, etc., are just few that come to my mind. What makes those logos easily remembered other than being aggressively promoted? Simplicity, appropriateness, attractiveness and consistency are the elements that make these worldwide brands successful and easily remembered. Why is it important to remember a logo? A logo is typically the first impression your target market will receive about your product or service and we all know first impressions are vital to long term success. Remembering your logo without actually seeing it is the goal of every brand. That means the logo/brand is psychologically emblazoned into the memory of your target market and you now own that property in their mind and heart. That’s the first step to persuading them to trust and invest into your logo/brand.
4. From a business card to a baseball cap to a billboard and a website Flavicon—a logo must be able to be Reproduced easily. That means it has to be simple and easy to read. It really is that simple and is often harder to accomplish that you might imagine. Business owners, candidates and organization directors often want to include all of their thoughts and dreams in their logos – it’s not a wise direction because all of that complexity leads to an hard to read and hard to reproduce logo. Through our training and experience we’ve learned that keeping a logo simple so that it can be easily reproduced gives the venture the best opportunity for successfully messaging their audience so that they receive the adequate awareness and response.
You can view a few of the logos/brands we’ve designed and developed over last 20+ years here