What Makes an Effective Logo
Among other purposes, a logo is important because it allows businesses an additional way of differentiating their products and services from competitors in addition to packaging, advertisements. etc. It communicates the ownership of a particular good or service and is essential for the majority of brands. Here are some qualities that make a logo effective.
Great Logos Can Be Easily Recreated From Memory: If a random person can take notice, remember and recreate a logo by hand, it is probably an effective one. In this digital age where thousands of brands and businesses are created and marketed each day, there is a ton of information being competed against, making having a unique and memorable logo imperative. Simplicity is key.
Logos Should Be Versatile: An effective logo should have the ability to work across a variety of media and applications. Your brand’s logo should be clear whether scaled to the size of a postage stamp, or blown up to the size of a billboard. Great logos also work in reverse color (light logo on a dark background or vice versa).
Logos Need To Be Appropriate: Logos should be appropriate for their intended audiences. For example, the Toy’s-R-Us logo has a child-like font and colors to reflect its intended audience. The same qualities would be inappropriate for a company such as a bank or law firm.
Many Iconic Logos Aren’t Literal: A logo mark on its own is almost worthless. If you take a look at the Apple or Nike logos before the companies existed, you would have zero emotional reactions to them. A logo is a visual piece in a bigger brand identity system and to be effective, it has to embody and transport the meaning of a brand. It is rarely the meaning of a brand standing on its own.. it is essentially a visual cue and trigger to a much larger meaning.
Effective Logos are Timeless: Logos should ideally reflect the time they are living in, remaining fresh and relevant. A logo should have the ability to be updated and changed with the era, without the changes coming off as too radical. A great example of this is the Mercedes-Benz logo.