Throwing in the visual sink
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).
