A logo doesn’t make a brand

A logo doesn’t make a brand. But it is a brand’s most important visual asset.

Whatever your business does, whoever your customers, audience or followers are, wherever you are in the world, your logo is the crown jewel, the signature, the waving flag for your brand. It’s the image that is, or will be, most familiar to your audience when they think about your business, the visual that will appear on screens if you hit the headlines and the all important end frame in the multi-million pound ad campaigns you’ll be creating!

And so your logo should be designed and treated as such.

A good logo will, at the very least, visually portray the values of the business it’s representing and distinguish it from competitors. But the best logos tell a bigger story, they give an immediate idea of what the company is all about and stick in the minds of their viewers, creating instant recognition. Graphic Thought Facilities house and heart logo for Habitat and JohnsonBanks logo for Shelter are two great examples of this. They both successfully manage to distil the purpose and values of each business into a simple, attractive and memorable mark.

But, unfortunately, the best designed logo doesn’t guarantee success for a business and sometimes businesses become wildly successful with terrible logos. At the end of the day it’s about the products and services that the business offers. A great logo can be pulled down by crappy products and a rubbish logo can be elevated by such amazing service that it throws a veil of positivity over everything around it. These logos can even become so recognisable, no matter how bad they are, that brands are too scared to change them. A certain music streaming service comes to mind.

The quality of a businesses products and services however, are beyond a designer’s control. What we can control and in-fact, should demand, is that before we begin designing a logo, or any other elements for a brand, we know exactly why the business exists and what they stand for. Only then do we have a chance of creating a logo that tells an authentic story, communicates the vision of the organisation and resonates with its audience. If we can get that right it’s a big step towards creating a successful brand.