Everyone wants their logo to mean something - to represent some vital part of the company, product or service. Fair enough - that’s usually the point of the exericise, though often easier said than done. Creating a graphic image that tells a specific story about a sometimes fairly specialized business activity can be a daunting task and always runs the risk of becoming a mangled visual metaphor. Especially if the logo is designed in a ‘closed loop’ and even more so if created as part of a do-it-yourself project by someone without any real experience in design. Mangled visual metaphors often feature pictograms of human figures (the ubiquitous character with a circle for a head and a three-pointed graphic indicating his/her body) and often the activity being illustrated can very easily be interpreted as something else. This often involves logos that end up looking like naughty bits, or characters participating in activities that are much less than G-rated. As with many aspects of design, it’s always best to show you, rather than tell you. So, without further ado, let’s take a look at these (very real) logos -

Roh-oh. Now, we know that the pediatrics logo (1) is supposed to represent a caring physician offering comfort to a child (though that ain’t exactly what it looks like) and despite looking like the pair has been caught in flagrante delicto, we can sorta figure out that the top right image (2) depicts some sort of dental procedure. While (3) is meant to illustrate an oriental house set against a rising sun, it looks, ahm, almost pornographic, The computer services logo (4) is supposed to feature a mouse but can easily be confused with a certain part of the male anatomy, and while I understand that the dance instruction pictograms (5) are supposed to show a happy couple dancing the night away - can’t see anything but an image that would be better suited as an ad for a topless beach (look again). No doubt the designers of all these logos started out with only the best intentions, but somehow, somewhere, went seriously off the tracks and the mangled metaphors weren’t caught until the logo was in wide circulation. They knew exactly what they wanted to depict, and in their minds-eye, probably accomplished the task admiringly. They know what they want to see. Trouble is, most people who are viewing logos for the first time have no preconceived notions about what it is they’re supposed to be seeing - and they’ll interpret the logo into an image that they can recognize. And once someone has seen an alternate interpretation of your logo - especially if it’s racy - they will find it next to impossible to ‘unsee’ the naughty version.

What about some mainstream logos? Fortune 500 and the like? Well, here’s a fun test. Take the Toyota logo - unveiled in 1996 to commemorate the introduction of the Lexus brand of vehicles. I’ve always seen a guy in a cowboy hat. See it? Good. Now, you’ll have a hard time ‘unseeing’ it. Here’s the rationale behind the design, right from the horse’s mouth - Toyota’s Web site:

The current Toyota Mark consists of three ovals: the two perpendicular center ovals represent a relationship of mutual trust between the customer and Toyota. These ovals combine to symbolize the letter “T” for Toyota. The space in the background implies a global expansion of Toyota’s technology and unlimited potential for the future.”

A mangled metaphor? I’d argue yes. Toyota were expecting a lot from a few ovals, and while the people responsible for the design were probably quite impressed that they managed to crowbar some much metaphorical goodness into a car logo, I can’t see anything but a round-faced dude in a stetson….

Yeah, we get it. Your logo features Stars and Stripes because you’re patriotic. You have a globe in your logo because you’re, like global. And yeah, the little tripody figure with the circle for a head represents some dude or another (a whole bunch represents a bunch of dudes working together in tandem). Beams of light radiating from your icon indicates that there’s so much goodness emanating from the portrayed company, it simply can’t be contained within the central graphic and most people will fully understand that replacing a $ for an S in the logo indicates that you’re attempting to portray something to do with finance. Similarly, there’s very few logos where a molar (smiley face optional) can be found other than a design for a dentist. Trouble is, Murphy the Molar is used in a lot of designs for dentists. Some others? Trees represent growth. Swooshes represent hi-tech. A lightbulb represents an idea. Etc. Etc. Etc..

These, folks, are visual clichés, classified as such because they’ve been done, ad nauseam, to death. There’s far too many to list here, but they’re usually the very first thing that pops into your head when conceptualizing a logo for one industry or another. For that very reason, they should be discarded just as quickly. It’s very rare that the very fiest idea that you (or your designer) will crank out is the best idea (it’s called a design process for a reason), and the first idea you have runs a very, very high risk of being a cliché.

True story: we were developing a logo for a town - let’s call it Whereverville - and their bicentennial celebrations. The job seemed fairly straightforward and in the original project brief, the client outlined that they wanted to add a visual reference to a famous landmark - a monument in the city square - to the design. Fair enough. The monument was unique to the town, was where most of the planned events were to take place, and instantly identified the logo as representing Whereverville. The initial round of preliminary designs went to committee (where many concept problems arise) and the request for modifications came back. The monument graphic was “just peachy, thanks very much, but we’d like to add a few more things” to make the logo “wow” (roh-oh).

They wanted a train (lots of people arrived at Whereverville by rail), the train needed a station (obviously) so add that, the community boasted lots of farmers so work in a barn (naturally the barn also needed a windmill), throw in a few cows, some trees, there’s these mountains, and oh yeah, Whereverville looks great at sunset so if you could toss that in too, well, that would be great. And while you’re at it, the residents of Whereverville are particularly proud of the new City Hall so we’d like a fully rendered graphic of that to boot. A few design elements had become a laundry list - a veritable cornucopia of disparate graphic elements, all competing for real estate and attention. The logo was to be used on freebie keychains so one of the planned uses saw the design being reproduced at just over an inch wide, and it was inevitable that every one of the elements would end up as featureless squiggles when reproduced at any size less than, oh I don’t know, 15 feet wide.

The designer handling the gig voiced concerns about the complexity of the logo - and the predictable headaches - but was overridden (client knows best doncha know) so each of the requested elements was sketched, rendered and added to the increasingly complex graphic (of course, creating this myriad of illustrations expanded the time line significantly, so in addition to a skyrocketing production times, we also had an increasingly impatient client on our hands). Once the revised graphic was completed, it went once again to committee, where it was decided that well, maybe the logo was now too complicated, and maybe we could pare it down to just feature the monument from the town square. For those not paying attention, that was two weeks ago, when the prelims were handed in. But now the client was frustrated - “this is taking longer than we expected”, as was the designer who’s perfectly rendered barn, windmill, cows and train would never see the light of day.

Moral of this story - the simpler the better. Designers sometimes criticize The Logo Factory for designs that sometimes lean towards an ‘illustrative logo‘ style, so we’re not as arbitrary in applying this ‘rule’ as others, but generally speaking - the simpler the logo the more chance you have of if being remembered, and the less headaches you’ll have in various applications, especially when used as smaller sizes.

Here’s a bonus too - if you still plan to use a complex illustration in your new logo and you’re using outlines, do not use lines that are a consistent thickness. This is a sure-fire way to have your logo look like ‘clip art’ or, if you’re a designer, have your client complain that your work looks like ‘clip art’. Vary your line thicknesses and your illustrative logo will take on a entirely new dimension (we’ll be taking a more in-depth look at this is in an upcoming ‘Studio Tips’ feature).

While people have generally clued into this one, there’s still the occasional outbreak (and some online logo design outfits still seen to be hopelessly addicted to slapping swooshes on everything from dentist to pet shop logos). Swooshes (or swishes) were all the rage a few years ago (looked all high-techy and stuff) but now, they’re a design element that translates exactly into “I dunnoh - didn’t have any other ideas”. I’ve seen portfolios at online logo design sites that consist of one swooshy logo after another - for all practical purposes all these logos are identical, it’s just the names that have been changed. Not that we haven’t had issues with this ourselves. Hell, in the late 90s, we were guilty of adding a few swooshes here-and-there (okay, maybe more than a few) when the ‘dot-com’ boom was all the rage. At some point the ‘thou shalt not swoosh’ was added to the TLF lexicon and while it took a little 12-step rehab, we’ve managed to stay on the ’swoosh’ wagon. If you take a look, there’s a few online sites that still need a ’swoosh’ intervention…

Whenever words are typed out in any design software package, the program ‘guesses’ how close the letters should be to eachother. This is known as Kerning (or more accurately in this case - ‘auto’ Kerning). Alas, these are only estimates and some programs do it better than others (Microsoft Word = though not a design program, is the worst, Adobe Illustrator is better though not perfect) and what looks good on your monitor will look hideous when enlarged to billboard size. The only way to effectively space typography is by ‘eyeball’ and by hand. Some letter combinations - V & A for example - require tighter spacing than say, M & N. Setting up correctly spaced typography is critical - poorly spaced letters will register in the viewer’s minds eye as an amateur-hour logo, even if they can’t quite put their finger on what’s wrong. And yes, this also includes the ‘tag line’ of your design. These are the group of words, usually small, under the logo that invariably describes what the featured company does, or how good they are at doing it. I’ve seen taglines with default kerning through which you could drive a Mack Truck. And while we’re talking about fonts, for the love of gawd, if you’re going to use off-the-shelf fonts (perfectly acceptable) there are certain type faces that were never meant to be used as display. Chauncery Script is one (shudder). Papyrus was cool (about six thousand logos ago). And oh yeah - a logo (and tagline) with anything more than two font styles risks imitating a ransom note…

You’ll bump into Top Ten lists all over the toobz (thank you David Letterman). How to do this. How to do that. You’ll even find dozens of numbered pointers telling you “How to create a great logo” or some variant thereof, and all are valuable to some degree. We thought we’d kick off the weekend with a look at ways you can screw up a perfectly good logo design project (based on actual case histories from TLF gigs that, for one - or more - of the reasons listed, have gone off the rails). I’ve tried (you can judge how successfully) to write this with both designers and clients in mind. So without futher ado, here’s #10 of 10 ways that can sink a perfectly good logo…

#10 - Design your logo in Microsoft Word, Paint or even the king of pixel based image software, Adobe Photoshop.

Creating a bitmap logo in a pixel based design software is only going to lead to headaches and invariably, uneccessary expense. Same applies to logos developed using so-called logo design software available at the local office supply store. You won’t be able to enlarge your design due to resolution issues. You won’t be able to add your logo to other artwork (unless it’s been designed with a transparent background and even that comes with issues). You won’t be able to change colors without a series amount of work (and even then, with unpredictable results). And spot color reproduction? Forget it. Take a look at your logo assets - if you don’t see a file with the extension .eps (vector) .ai or at the very least .pdf (vector), it’s time to see a designer who will introduce you to the joys of vector based logos. And Microsoft Word? Nuttin’ to do with design…