A friend sent me his company’s new logo today. It’s one I looked particularly forward to seeing, since I had been a part of the approval team for the former (and quite nice) one years ago.
The company is a well-known bastion of the good old business days. Over 70 years old, family-run, and thumbing its nose at the recession amid the precarious financial services market. The place oozes manly-man adjectives like stalwart, vigorous, robust, and solid. I was certain that’s how the new logo would read.
That’s why I was shocked to see not only the wimpy, curvy, gradated logo, but along with it a stock, vanilla-ish sans serif font straight from 1953. For such a hearty company to have such a weak and uninspired logo is not only bad creative, it’s bad business.
Your logo is the first tool your customers and prospects have to size you up. When your logo makes a bad first impression, you lose credibility and interest, no matter how hard you scramble to recover it. Your logo should inspire loyalty, admiration, trust and convey your commercial brand. If it’s laughable, so is your company. If it’s amateurish, so seems your business.
I recently came across a website after my own heart: Your Logo Makes Me Barf. The logos there are all good examples of what happens when you take the easy way: Nothing. YourLogoMakesMeBarf.com “is intended to be a humorous look at what can go wrong when an unskilled person (your neighbor’s brother’s uncle’s friend anyone?!) designs a logo.” That goes for free online logo makers and logo contests.
A logo doesn’t have to be bank-breaking. There are several variables in pricing a good logo design, such research, the number of comps presented and the number of revisions required. We’re pretty partial to our amazing designer Penny, who designs amazing logos, websites, newsletters, ads and more every day.
No matter how small your business is you can’t afford to look cheap or inexperienced. Concerned your logo might end up here? Call us today.