Professional
 Logo Design

Which icons stand out from the crowd?

KFC, Pizza Hut, Apple Macintosh, McDonald's are only a few easily recognizable logos. Yet, the success of their respective businesses is due to all marketing endeavors. Nonetheless, most major logos have changed since their initial establishment: Apple ^[7], Sony ^[8], Coca Cola, Playboy, Mazda, Warner Brothers, and Lego amongst many others ^[10]. As well as differences in design techniques and norms at the time of their creation, the evolution of these logos is also due to an increase in the financial resources available to their companies over time.

The Importance of crafting a unique logo

Many logo's contain similarities, particularly logos from a template background. So, it's likely that a logo may have a partial clone somewhere in the digital world^[10]. Professionally created logos are crafted with uniqueness in mind. Copying an already existing logo is unethical and, often illegal. As such, in many countries, trademark laws protect the uniqueness of logos ^[6]. Copying a logo is not an effective strategy on any account. Copied logos may transfer company recognition to a competitor, losing company recognition before the game even begins. Apart from this, the stress, hassle, and expense from legal matters is hard to justify ^[5].

Are logo's meaningful?

Because a logo provides a business with a unique company identifier, potential customers may initially judge a company based on the quality of its logo. Your logo represents your company's missions, goals and direction. It may encompass a combination of elements representing your field of business in a single iconic image.

Types of logos

Logos are designed in several forms: text only, symbolic (also known as an ideogram), or a combination of both text and symbol. When using a symbolic logo, the "beauty" is certainly "in the eye of the beholder". Symbolic logos are open to interpretation. The advantages that symbolic logos have over text-only logos are:

1. They give your business a unique "stamp" with no worry over font licenses or styling.
2. They present your company to your potential customers regardless of language or alphabetic character used.

Cross-platform issues of aspect ratio

Because logos are used on multiple documents and other types of media, it is important to keep the design of your logo as simple as possible. Taking into consideration that a logo will be placed on more than one platform, it's essential that the logo adheres to the appropriate aspect ratios. These problems surface especially when combining your logo with other graphical elements, such as those found on business cards, stationary, and advertising materials. Changes in aspect ratio may make a logo appear taller, shorter, thinner, wider, or chunkier than desired. In some cases companies develop more than one version of their logo in order to accommodate different aspect ratios.

When and why to change a logo?

The world of graphics certainly has changed. The advent of digital graphics induced many established companies to update their logos. Yet, only rarely does a company choose to completely re-craft its logo in entirety.

Some logos have been around for many years. Popular logos include the Michelin man, Nike, Virgin, Coca Cola, IBM and Kodak. Often, logos undergo change over time, some gradually and other's radically. The Virgin and IBM logos have changed drastically since they were first published, but once the businesses gained success in their markets, additional changes to their logos were minimal ^[3].

One popular move is to simplify a logo to allow better public recognition. However, it's a dangerous move to completely re-craft your logo as you may lose its recognition as a representative of your company. Many companies choose only to update their logo based on new colour schemes and element positioning. More often than not logos evolve. Taking similar elements from their predecessor forms a fresh, clean, updated image that represents modern changes, new goals, and directions for a business.

Authors:

Bryan Vorel (Vorel Designs, Kenyon, Minnesota, U.S.A.)
Evangelos Evangelou (PricklyPear Media, Cyprus)

References

1. ^ Wikipedia, "Corporate Branding" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_branding Retrieved 2011-08-01
2. ^ Wikipedia, "Logo" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo Retrieved 2011-08-01
3. ^ "21 Logo Evolutions of the World’s Well Known Logo Designs", Bored Pandahttp://www.boredpanda.com/21-logo-evolutions-pepsi-cola-apple-nike-nokia/ Retrieved 2011-08-01
4. ^ MyProfessionalAdvertising, "Logos That Work"http://www.myprofessionaladvertising.com/Logos%20That%20Work.htm Retrieved 2011-08-01
5. ^ James Wagner, "Copycat logos are pitting high schools and colleges in a trademark turf war". October 21, 2010 Washington Post Staff Writerhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/21/AR2010102106526.html?hpid=topnews Retrieved 2011-08-01
6. ^ Jacob Cass, "Copyright Issues In Logo Design". JustCreateDesignhttp://justcreativedesign.com/2009/01/14/logo-design-copyright-laws/ Retrieved 2011-08-01
7. ^ "Logo Design History". Logo Orange http://www.logoorange.com/logodesign-A.php Retrieved 2011-08-01
8. ^ "The History Of The Sony Logo". Sony Insider http://www.sonyinsider.com/2009/03/11/the-history-of-the-sony-logo/ Retrieved 2011-08-01
9. ^ "Evolution of logos of Famous Brands". ArtAtmhttp://artatm.com/2010/04/evolution-of-logos-of-famous-brands/ Retrieved 2011-08-01
10. ^ "Trivia". Good Logo.comhttp://www.goodlogo.com/extended.info/2616 Retrieved 2011-08-01