What’s in a logo?
If you think that it’s just another way to identify a company or product, well, you’re partially right.
Logos have an important part to play in establishing the look of packaging, advertising, and branding. If that’s all you think a logo is, though, then you probably wonder whether you really need one.
Isn’t it enough just to rely on your brand name or elements like the color palette to identify your product?
You could choose to do that — but it would be to the detriment of your brand. If you’re interested in building your brand and expanding your reach, there are compelling reasons to invest time, energy, and finances into an excellent logo.
There’s more to a logo than meets the eye. Let’s take a look at three key areas where a logo helps build up your brand.
Logos Elevate Communication
Marketing, customer service, and brand growth — what’s at the heart of each of them?
Good communication!
Ultimately, your brand growth will depend heavily on how effectively you communicate your services, brand personality, and customer service to your audience. And logos bear a significant portion of that communication.
In logo design, each element contributes to the messaging, and makes it easier to appeal directly to your core audience.
- Colors can be chosen based on the psychology of color, which gives the designer insight into how a specific audience is likely to react to a certain color.
- Fonts are also influential in the same way, and the psychology of fonts can help you choose a typeface that coordinates with your market and messaging.
- Graphic choice, including both the subject and the style, tell an onlooker a lot about the brand the logo represents.
- Effective use of negative space can make the viewer more likely to spend time looking at the logo and communicate a peaceful, comfortable feeling.
Logos tell your brand story as you put together branded content for effective guerilla marketing. As you leverage your logo to communicate with your audience and build your brand, it creates a bridge, connecting your target demographic to your company and adding to their emotional ties with your brand personality.
Logos Make Your Brand Stand Out
This is the first key point for a reason. Simply put, your brand won’t flourish if it gets lost in the crowd of competition. And if your brand isn’t clearly identified, it won’t stand out.
There’s obviously more to this than slapping your name on a product and expecting everyone to pay attention. There’s an art to logo design — the choices that are made, the elements that go into the design, can not only set your brand apart but actually draw consumers towards your products.
To make your logo really shine:
- Choose colors, fonts, and graphics that align with your other branding. Your logo is the spearhead of your brand, so it should harmonize with marketing and your website.
- Research the competition and make sure that your logo isn’t too much of a look-alike with any other existing logos in your market.
- Analyze logo design trends within your niche to capitalize on the expectations of your audience — but don’t just blindly follow any trend that comes your way. Be picky.
Logos Build Loyalty
Speaking of emotional ties, that’s at the heart of the third vital point for why you should have a logo: logos help to build loyalty.
Think about it from the point of view of a consumer. A logo is likely the first exposure they have to any given company. It influences whether they decide to pursue doing business with that company. And once they do, and have a positive experience, the sight of that logo thereafter will remind them of that positivity. Each good experience contributes to that emotional bond, and each sighting of the company logo will stimulate positive feelings.
The more influential that bond grows, the more likely that your audience will seek out your brand even when faced with the competition.
And they’ll seek out your brand by specifically looking for your logo.
Ultimately, it’s a cycle that benefits both consumer and brand. And it’s all tied into the little design that a brand uses as a visual identifier — the logo.
What Your Logo Can Do For You
So, now that we’ve laid out all the facts, what do you think? Do you need a logo to build your brand?
If you went into this thinking, “What can my logo do for me?” then the question should have changed by now to, “What can’t my logo do for me?”
With the benefits of building loyalty, communicating effectively, and making your brand stand out from the competition, it’s obvious that creating a logo is a worthwhile effort. Do you need to have a logo to identify your brand? Technically, no. But do you need a logo in order to build your brand?
The answer is definitely yes!
Julian Mills
Night owl, adventurist, and day time content writer. What you need to know about me is that I live and breathe writing. Shoot me a topic, and I’ll write for you.