Effective logo design and brand identity
- Mayya Geo
- February 20, 2022
- Time to read: 8 min.
A friend of a friend started her own business a while ago—let’s call her Grace. Grace was already doing well and communicating her value to others on social media and building her personal brand. To visually customize her content, she was already using specific colors, typography, and a logo, all very good. One day, Grace had this exciting idea to start her own business, and decided that she wanted to look more professional. She was inspired, motivated, and ready to invest a lot of her efforts into building this new idea.
What did she do? She went to another friend, Alice, who was a brand designer, and talked to her about the new business idea, past activities, and what she wanted. And while she was passionately talking about her idea and explaining her current achievements, they reached the not so exciting topic of the project budget. Grace said she had €200 to develop her shiny new logo and brand identity.
What was Alice’s reaction to this budget?
She was shocked! Well, she was shocked, but she wasn’t surprised. Alice was a professional with many years of experience. In the past, other clients would also show up with tiny budgets. As a professional, Alice politely said to Grace that this might not be enough to build a cohesive new brand and logo.
But why? Why is €200 not enough? And what was Grace still missing to effectively build her logo and brand identity?
Where does everything begin
Building a business or idea is always exciting! And of course you want to make this idea a success—to make it valuable, not only for yourself, but for your customers too. No matter where you are in the journey of this process, you will want to communicate it. You also want your business to be beautifully visually represented—it just deserves it. The time invested on your side is so much: sleepless nights, building, working, and visualizing your success.
That’s where your business idea begins.
But if you want your business to be, let’s say, earning a revenue of a million per year, what do you think your business should look like? What should the logo and identity be? How much do you think you should invest to achieve the goal of earning a million euro revenue? If you are not a designer or strategist yourself, you will need help with this task. And even if you are, you will still need help.
Effective brand identity and logo begin with an idea.
In our case, this will be a business idea. It’s supported with an idea of where this business wants to be in the near and long future and actionable steps to go there. Moreover, what are the real motivations behind this idea? What is the business about? What are the limits, values and beliefs?
Why should this idea even exist?
What do you need to build an effective logo and brand identity
As we all know, your logo should be exactly as you are imagining it, maybe even just like the logo you saw from another brand. It should always be big in the presentation of your materials. A huge juicy logo is an effective logo!
No, I’m just teasing you, checking if you’re still paying attention, because what follows next is quite important.
Dedication, belief, and investment in your idea
The first thing you need is a dedication to your business idea. If you really want your business to be a success, you should be the first to believe that and allocate resources so this can happen. The more you want to grow, the more resources you will need.
The problem with the €200 budget is that it won’t be enough to plan a comprehensive brand and logo. Why? Because this is a process, and the bigger you want to grow, the more time it will take to build an identity around that. It’s fine if you are just starting out; there are platforms where you can purchase an identity and logo for around €200. But the question is:
Is this really going to help you achieve your business goals?
Do you believe anyone would help—believe in you and dedicate hours and hours of work to building your idea—for no money? It just doesn’t make sense.
What an effective logo and brand should do
Logo and brand identity can do so much for your business when done right! When they are created based on your strategy and factors like values, mission, specific audience, and vision, they will be a visual summary and ambassador of your idea. Therefore, they will communicate the right messages to the right audience and will showcase the value of the idea. They will speak in a visual or written manner. Once all parts are harmoniously working together, they will be the unique identity for the business.
Effective logo design
What is a logo design—a simple stylized image that represents an idea, business, organization, or person. Logo design is a subtle mastery. It’s most likely one of the most challenging tasks for a graphic designer. And there is a reason for that.
The thing is that logo design has been around for a long, long time. In the past, humans were already using symbols, signature marks, and emblems to identify themselves. Logos were used for several thousand years. For example, Egyptian’s were known to mark their animals to showcase ownership. Antient Greeks and Romans were marking their pottery to showcase the producer. So adopting a symbol for ease of recognition has been popular for quite a while.
The reason why crafting a logo is so complex is that it’s so challenging to summarize anything in one symbol. There are so many different techniques and options of how to create the logo, what to showcase. A logo can be many things, but the one thing it should always be is a visual representation and summary of your brand.
An effective logo will present the core of your brand. This representation and style will speak about all that your brand is, what the value is in it, what it has to offer, and what the brand stands for. A logo will be simple and easy to remember. Also, ensuring that this symbol doesn’t exist already is so important—you want your logo to be associated with your brand and not another one.
Assuring that this symbol will work on different backgrounds, media, and surfaces is part of the process. A logo should come with a guide of use and recommendations of placement. Quite often a logo comes in different sizes and compositions to enable consistent and flexible usage.
Effective brand identity
Brand identity serves primarily as a way consumers identify with a specific brand. An effective brand would also build an identity and reputation for this business. Consumers will be able to understand why this brand exists and what the beliefs and values are behind it, which helps them to associate with it. Brands with a positive reputation are more successful and reach higher profitability.
Research shows that businesses with consistent brand communication are more likely to be preserved as established and trustworthy. Consumers are more likely to choose a product from a brand they already know. Loyalty follows when this brand manages to consistently prove the value of the product or services over time.
That’s why effective brand identity goes further than visual aspects. It will establish a specific set of rules and visual guidelines that, when working harmoniously together, will help your business to talk, look, and feel consistent and authentic.
An effective brand focuses on a concrete focus group. Consumers have been proven to base their buying decisions and choice of product or service on factors that somehow relate to their self-image. So the consumer will identify themselves through their decision, through the product or service they choose. Therefore, the brand image should nourish the preferences of this specific group of people.
And as the communication of a brand is often applied to many different media, it’s a must for a brand identity system to allow flexible application. There would be specific rules on how the brand communicates on social media, on the invoice, or on their business card.
Measure effectiveness
How do you know if your logo and brand are working and effective? As some say, sometimes when you are just starting out, you need to first imagine the end. When building a logo and brand identity, you need to know what you want them to achieve. This way, when created and in use, you can measure whether they are working and effective.
For example, there could be objectives for creating a logo—more revenue, better brand representation, winning new markets or many others. Be sure to set clear expectations and a set of measurements when creating your logo and brand identity.
However, those will grow as your business grows. When your business needs change, you can always refresh and further develop. You don’t want to just leave your logo and brand identity to gather dust on the shelf. You can always review and improve over time!
Why effective logo design and brand identity are important
Every person has beliefs, motivations, values, and principles. The way one communicates them to others builds their reputation.
The same goes for any brand. The better the brand manages to effectively communicate why it exists—what the value and mission is—the greater the potential to gain interest and a positive reputation. If your brand creates something amazing and valuable that people just need in their life, why not find a way to show it in the best possible light?
Find this way today! Make your logo and brand shine even brighter and attract the right people.
Thank you for reading! 💜
We are GEOBO, a design studio specialising in branding for fashion and creative tech companies.
