madhouse musings!

All of us want that “best” Logo designed for our startup. That Logo, which will differentiate our brand from the clutter, something that will uniquely represent our USPs & one that will aesthetically appeal to all sensibilities!

So, what is that Good Logo or what all should it have?

I’m not a researched authority on Logo Designs, but practical experience coupled with some practical design sense has me listing the following:

• A good logo should look memorable and describe something. This is very important as Logo is an integral part of any business / brand. It is important to get the philosophy of what the company stands for represented in the logo unit.
• It should be memorable and be remembered even after the logo is out of one’s sight – what’s the point of not recognizing or recalling a brand after? (its a failed effort, if so)
• For a new brand, logos should favor – Simplicity & Directness Over Style & Subtlety You know the KISS rule, right?
• A logo should be effective without color (I mean black & white). The true test of a good logo is that it conveys what it does even without color.
• A logo that’s designed around a particular color is seldom a huge failure. Reminds me of the Nike “Swoosh” – I remember the thick strong swoosh – without Nike written anywhere around it and surprisingly without any color association.
• Though, you can definitely use color to your advantage, but only over and above the main logo element (the main parts of the logo) – say, the Mcdonald Golden arch. Good designers usually design in black or grey and then add the color element to it
• A logo should be scalable (ironically, the scalable term applys to logos too LOL). A logo should be such that it can be used in any shape, size, form, texture, context and it should convey the same meaning, should retain its effect and should have the capacity to replicate itself well.
• In short, the details in the logo should as clear while its 10feet as it will when it’s an inch in size. Think various use cases of the logo in its lifetime from website to button buddies
• A logo should be appropriate for the business it identifies. It should have a stand out effect over its competitors.
• Using an element for a logo just because it needs to be there is a bad design – the element should make sense and should be in context.
• Always use a simple, readable font for your logo – No fancy or remotely fancy font! A quick check on Logo’s of the most popular / big brands reveals that their font type is Solid & Simple
• Design of the logo should surround around “Readablity” of the brand / logo
• We want to load our first logo with all possible decorations – emboss effect / drop shadow / gradient / etc – Keep Away from all that temptation! KISS rule, remember?
• The most important aspect of any logo designing effort is that the end result should clearly break away from clutter and stand out screaming its identity.
• It is NOT always necessary for you logo to have a tagline. Read my post on taglines here.

It is important for you to take ownership of the logo design. Outsourcing it to a designer is the thing to do, but it is important that you know what you want and convey the same to the designer. You can try and draft a short design specification document which will list out mainly, but not inclusive:

• Brief description of the product / service / business for which the logo is being generated
• Purpose of the Logo
• Mission / Philosophy of the design / company
• Logo design concept – If you want to follow a particular style, if there is a story that the logo should convey, etc.
• Colors
• Any other important detail you may want the designer to remember

The above will not only let you convey your thoughts to the designer, but will help the designer understand what is required and estimate efforts.

Once the initial version of the logo design is out, its is important that you quickly go around and take customer / general user feedback by way some random sampling.  This you can do by asking directed questions to your friends & family, your team / employees, &  some select customers of yours. You can even get feedback from some perfect strangers by walking into a cafe and asking people for their feedback. You can always thank them for their time by buying them coffee!

Logo design is an iterative process and it changes with time. What is important to achieve is a clean design, easy to read and remember font & a simple representation of the same – such a design can be everlastingly relevant.

Here’s a site that has listed logo design trends and some interesting tips:
http://www.logolounge.com/articles/default.asp?Archive=True&ArticleID=680

Taglines traditionally are defined as a part of the brand building exercise that sums up the mission, intent and image of the business. When I studied brand, logo elements and the importance of the “tagline” in theory, as a student, I was fascinated about the fact that if the tagline copy was written intelligently – it can work wonders. I admired “Just do It” and still do! I did use some of the do’s and don’ts while designing logos and creating brand identity documents in my career.

When I was creating the logo element for  Madhouse, my first startup, I religiously spent sometime figuring out what the tagline should be. I dint even think of my logo without a tagline. The belief was that, we should be able to use the tagline without the company /brand name eventually to create the same recall and recognition in users minds. Inspired by the Nike Swoosh!

As time went by, I noticed that most new generation internet companies were emerging without the tagline! What mattered the most was the brand name or the name of the business and not so much the tagline. I remember the likes of ebay, amazon, yahoo, google, apple, rediff, indiatimes, etc. not having a tagline. And as we move on, many more established companies are dropping their taglines.

I guess, the way things have changed in branding, building companies, communicating the value of the business – brand recall is a great challenge and consuming, now imagine adding a tagline to it and trying to push the whole branding. Its too much to ask!

The reality for today is that Taglines are redundant! They are nothing but noise in the business scheme of things. Having said that, I think for statrups / new companies having a tagline is a personal choice. Thought, its important to get that darn tagline right – if not it’s a disaster of sorts before your company has started!

To quote relevant examples from my real-life experience: While working with LifeMojo as part of the MVP business acceleration program in 2008, we discussed at length to have a tag-line and when we launched the site we did have a tag-line too. But soon we realized that the tagline was not adding too much value, if anything, the logo was looking clunky and bad trying to accommodate the tag-line. And so, we just knocked it out! On the contrary,  the tagline Deskaway is Simplify Teamwork and this for me is the perfect summation of what Deskaway stands for as a business.

And so… Contemplate real hard if you’d like to have a tagline for your company or not. And if you’d still like to have a tagline for your business / startup here’s some insight that I’ve garnered through some years of experience:

• Taglines can be of two major kinds:
  • Ones that have a direct reference to the business – company, service or the product, Deskaway’s tagline for example or Kingfisher Airlines’ Fly the Good Times or United’s Fly the friendly skies
  • Ones that reflect the philosophy of the company – Nike, Just Do it! Or Nokia, Connecting People.
• So when you are contemplating having a tagline for your business. There are few things you may want to think about:
  • What’s the purpose the tagline is going to actually serve? “I’m lovin’ it” has become synonyms with the golden arch and McD’s burgers now. But to achieve this they’ve been at it for years now.
  • The tagline should actually add value to your brand, the business offering and enhance the perceived value of your business.
  • What do you want to say as part of the tagline? Do you want it to reflect your mission? Connecting People; Your business philosophy Always low prices, always or talk about the product offering directly? Utterly Butterly Delicious!
  • A tagline must reflect the feeling / emotions of the customer and not what the people behind the business want customers to perceive.
  • Ensure that the tagline is short enough to fit with your logo unit and to be reprinted anywhere – from a visiting card to a huge sky-drop size hoarding
  • The tagline must be well written to gel with your business ideology and should convey something.
  • The tagline should be simple in language, no buzz or jargon usage
  • A tagline should serve its purpose at least for a few years for the business.
  • A tagline has to be direct to appeal to the larger customer base, so that they can identify it and recall it when required.
  • Intellectual taglines are recipe for disaster
  • A tagline that has no recall is a tagline worth removing
  • A bad tagline is as good as a ruined brand. Better not to have a tagline, than have a bad one

In all, I frankly don’t remember many taglines of companies that are doing well. I remember an one off “Just Do it!” or “I’m lovin’ it!” coz these are the rare gems that have risen out of a lot of crappy taglines by established companies.

So, as a last tip – if you’re not sure what you want the tagline to be, if it hasn’t come naturally to you – then don’t waste your time on thinking up one – its not worth the time spent. Not at all for a startup!