Before we get delve into how to design a logo, it’s probably a good idea to take a few minutes and decide whether or not you (or if you’re a designer, your client) actually need one in the first place. Many folks will try and convince you that it’s an absolute necessity to have a nifty mark that symbolizes your company. “The very survival of your business depends on it” kind of thing. Naturally, they (like The Logo Factory) have a vested interest in you investing the time, and more importantly, the financial resources. While many of their arguments will be valid, their point-of-view (like mine) is not without some self-interest bias.
Not that there’s anything wrong with this position – no business has ever suffered because of a good logo (not so true with a bad one – an important distinction) and at the very least, an effective mark is a worthwhile “what harm can it do” investment. But I’d also argue that not every small business needs a logo. This may seem somewhat odd – especially from someone who makes a living selling graphic design services, but asking yourself “why do I need a logo” is perhaps the most critical step. By figuring that out, and as this is a ‘do it yourself’ themed series, we may save you some time, as well as some unnecessary frustration (an inherent component of the process itself).
How can you tell if even you need a company logo? There’s no cut-and-dry ‘rules’, but we’ve managed to distill the main reasons for designing a logo into ten salient points. By answering a few basic questions that these points invoke, it might be a little easier to decide one way or the other. Ready? Let’s take a look;
1): What are the time-delinated goals of your company or the product/service you are developing – is this a long term business plan for which you require returning customers and the necessary brand loyalty?
2): Are you going to be competing for the attention of prospective clients and customers in a crowded marketplace, against other vendors or suppliers who’ve aleady got their foot in the door?
3): Will you be entering an already thriving industry and – let’s not beat around the bush – attempting to ‘steal’ business away from other, more established companies?
4): Do you need to get people’s attention – the “here I am, and here’s what I do” kind of attention? For example, are you going to rely on advertising and marketing to get the ‘word’ out?
5): Do already have marketing and advertising devices in place – newsletters, a website, ads in the local paper – that could use ’spiffing up’?
6): Do you already have some unused logo shelf-space already set aside? You might have, for example, a company car or a bare storefront, potential advertising mediums where a logo might silently advertise your company without the involvement of any appreciable costs, save the initial design development.
7): Would your business benefit from hard-goods marketing? For example – would you like to offer premium giveaways such as mugs, pens or desktop calendars? Does your staff interact with potential, or established, customers where staff-shirts, baseball caps or other marketing trinkets would help develop brand awareness?
8): Does part of your business plan involve networking (as much as I hate using that overwrought phrase) or ‘cold-calling’? Generally speaking, both of these tired but-true tactics methods involve the distribution of your business card (and in the case of mail-outs, a letterhead) as an initial way of introducing yourself to your market or on a one-to-one basis to a potential customer.
9): Do you plan to avail your business, services or product to a far reaching market? The scope of your market can be viewed on a sliding scale – with friends and family on one end, through town and state-wide to national and even global on the other. The requirement for a representative logo will increase as your planned market gets bigger.
10): Do people that you consider your direct competition, and to a much lesser degree companies that you’d like to emulate, boast a decent logo and marketing materials?
If you answered yes to two or more of these questions, then you’ll probably need a logo and all that entails. In fact, a logo and the surrounding brand support material will probably be crucial to growing your business past a few sales here-and-there.
Conversely, if none of the questions above apply to you, and you’re working for ‘the man’ during the day, only moonlighting to a few friends at night – say, accounting services come tax time or running an eBay store selling trinkets from your basement – then you don’t need one. Simple as that. The reward vs. investment ratio makes the cost and time required prohibitive. As much as I’d like to claim that everyone needs a logo, it’s probably more ‘bang’ than what you need for the expectations you have, and the goals you have set.
If, however, you answered in the affirmative to several of our ‘pre-flight’ questions, your business aspirations would appear to involve developing your business further and more investigation is probably in order. Another litmus test – if you’re planning to develop some brochures, a website or maybe even an advertisement in the local paper – you might need a logo. You’ll notice that’s still a ‘might’. Bulletin boards at the corner supermarket are full of hand-posted ‘fliers’ – you’ll recognize them by the multitude of tiny ‘pull off strips with hand-written phone numbers, and while these advertisements might be more noticeable with a decent mark, they probably perform to the level that is desired – a trickle of inquires, a couple of solid leads and one or two sales. If that’s all that you’re after, then a full-blown identity workup is still more than what you need.
If, on the flip-side, you’re going to drop a few hundred (or thousand) on an ad that is to be featured on a newspaper or magazine page with a load of other ads, then yours better stand out (for the most part, classified ads still enjoy the ‘no logo needed’ status). Yes, your deals are better. Yes, your service is faster. Hell, you’re even a nice person. But if people don’t notice your ad, who really cares? A version of the ‘if a tree falls in the forest’ and ‘the sound of one hand clapping’ arguments. A great logo will help you grab attention – the very essence of any successful advertisement.
The same can be said of your website. Think about it this way – you’ve been looking for something you want to buy on the Internet. You’ve run into sites that sell exactly what you’re looking for, but for one reason or another, you decided to look elsewhere. Granted, you may have been turned off by the price and found similar goods for less using a Google search. But what about those times when you’ve backed out of a web site because the website wasn’t, for lack of a better word, ‘right’? It didn’t ‘feel’ as professional as the site that ultimately earned your business. Perhaps it ‘felt’ a little sketchy – bad graphics, spelling mistakes and broken links. And chances are, the site probably featured a hideous logo. All pretty nebulous stuff that requires a lot of scare quotes to explain. You probably couldn’t even put your finger on it at the time. Trouble is, if your fledgling company or service is poorly presented, neither will your potential clients. They’ll just ‘feel’ that something’s not quite right about your business and search elsewhere. In practical terms – you’ll lose the sale.
Once again, if you’re moonlighting filing tax returns on behalf of friends and family for a few bucks on the side, none of this is really an issue. Here’s the important part – if you’re trying to sell you services to absolute strangers – and have but a few seconds to convince them that offer exactly what they’re looking for, you need to think about branding your company with, at the very minimum, a decent logo. In a nutshell that’s what a good logotype and the related branding is all about. Convincing perfect strangers that you are the best (or at least, very good) at what you do, or what you sell.
Strangers you ask? Yep. Let’s take another example. For the sake of argument, let’s say your homemade strawberry jam was such a bonafide hit at family picnics you decided to sell it at the local farmer’s market for a couple of dollars a jar. You could probably still get by without a food logo on the lid, label or on your homemade booth. Captive audience, word of mouth, returning customers and a limited production capacity (how big is that crock-pot really?) all combine to render a logo less than critical. You’ll have few returning clients and you’ll always be on the lookout for new customers. If you want to sell the very same jam at the local supermarket, where it will compete with other brands sharing the same shelf-space, then you’ll need a brand, a company logo (and some pretty spiffy packaging). To be taken seriously by the folks deciding what brands of strawberry jam do, and don’t, make it onto the prime real estate of aisle #10, your company had better feature a serious logo. To convince supermarket customers to pick up your jam, and then hopefully sequester your product into their shopping cart will require some attention grabbing graphics. At the end of the day, a logo helps convince customers that you’re earnest about your business, as opposed to the ‘ahh, that’s cute’ image that served you so well at the farmer’s market. It’s war out there, and a great company mark is a formidable weapon to add to your arsenal.
While it’s true that not every company or business needs a logo, it can be argued that, in some instances anyway, a decent corporate identity is critical to the longevity and growth of some. By taking a long, hard look at what you want to accomplish with your entrepreneurial aspirations, you can decide which applies and whether to logo your fledgling business or not. If, after weighing all the pros and cons, you’ve decided to design your own logo (the theme of this series) your next step is how to name your new company, or how to make the best out of a name you’ve already established.
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