Before you start designing a business card or picking colors for the letterhead of your new business, you need a successful logo. Through the use of color and graphics, your logo should reflect the overall image you want your company to convey. It should give people a feel for what your company’s all about.
The best logos have several things in common. Here are four keys elements to a successful logo:
1. Simplicity
“A good way to think about simplicity is how many moving pieces there are in the logo,” says Jonah Berger, author of Contagious: Why Thing Catch On.
For instance, the old Apple logo was rainbow-colored, while the current one is rendered in solid black or simple grayscale. That newfound simplicity makes the logo easy to look at, which customers appreciate.
“The easier it is to process things, the more we like those things,” Berger says. For that reason, most brands want to present a simple aesthetic that’s easy for consumers to digest.
2. Brand Consistency
Your logo will communicate things to consumers about your brand, so you need to ensure that its design fits your company’s overall message.
Consider the Apple logo again. Whereas Apple’s old logo connoted the free spirit of an upstart that was taking on staid tech giants, its current position as one of the most valuable corporations in the world calls for the sleek, futuristic logo it has now.
“That’s consistent with the message that Apple wants to suggest: We are technology, but we’re friendly technology, we’re easy-to-use technology,” Berger says. If you’re starting a new company, Berger says, you should put some serious thought into your brand’s key characteristics and how you want to convey them in your logo.
3. Memorability
Memorability is the quality that makes your logo easy for customers to recall, which leads to repeat customers and word-of-mouth. Your logo should help them remember that you exist and what you stand for.
4. Market Testing
Don’t just trust your gut when designing a logo. Do market research. Get some independent feedback about whether your logo is saying everything you want it to say.
A successful logo is the foundation for all your promotional materials, so this is one area where spending a little more now really pays off later.