the Art of Zen

This article is focused more toward the small, midsized business (SMB) or new business owner. So you have a business, or are just starting one. You have to deal with accounting issues, inventory, location, and maybe hiring employees. Now that you have all that done, what’s next? Marketing, that’s what. But before you pick-up the phone and call your local newspaper or yellow book, you need to think about one very important thing – Your Brand.

Now a brand contains many different elements; colors, fonts, photographic style and the most important – your logo. Today I will be speaking about your logo. This element of your brand is the single most important thing you need to develop before you do any marketing at all. Your logo is the one thing that people need to associate with your company. People won’t remember your face, they won’t remember your address, and they won’t remember half the stuff you talk about, but they need to remember your logo. That is your one connection – and the one thing you need to establish credibility for yourself as a viable company and competitor in your market. The most important thing is to keep the logo simple and unique. It needs to be memorable, or you won’t succeed in your marketing ventures.

There are two parts to a logo, the Mark (design element) and the Logotype (text based part of logo) that makes up the Master Brand. Ideally, you would want the Mark to be able to stand alone and be memorable to your market. Sometimes you can incorporate a Tagline with the Master Brand; but with the right mark, a tagline isn’t necessary. A Master Brand (Mark and Logotype) needs to work within at least three design principles – full-color, black on white, reversed out (white on any dark color), and sometimes even duotone (black and gray on white).

While this is a very high level overview of what you need your brand to be able to do, here is a list of things to consider:

1. No Clipart – Have you ever seen those CD’s that have 25,000 objects on them? You can get them in any store that sells cheap software for about 9 bucks. This is the wrong way to go. A logos Mark needs to be memorable but not by being the same Mark used by the guy across town.
2. Text Only Logo – While a text-only logo is not always recommended, it is not a no-no. But keep in mind that a text-only logo is normally the business name. “Joe’s Plumbing” is not a good text-only logo. It is forgettable, and common. Sony, Phillips, Mobil, Fortune, TIME, are names that get in your head and are easy to remember. Now when you look at these text-only logos, you will see that they are not done in Helvetica or Times New Roman fonts (unless you’re an attorney or CPA). Successful text-only brands are done in unique or custom fonts and are done in multiple colors or surrounded by circles or squares to separate them from everything else.
3. Initials (Monogram) – I am not saying it CAN’T be done, but I am strongly against using initials. Solely due to the fact that it is so overdone that most people won’t remember you from the next guy with initials.
4. Photographs – A photograph is not a logo. Photographs or a photographic style can be incorporated into your brand style, but it is not a logo. A logo is something that needs to be on everything from labels to business cards, envelope, stationary, web sites, yellow page ads, newspapers, and a photograph does not reproduce well in multiple sizes or in a yellow page ad that only comes in black and white.
5. Illustrations – Now you will see a lot of illustrations that people try to pull-off as a logo. But what happens when you shrink an illustration with a lot of detail down to half the size of a postage stamp to put on your business card? You get a gloppy mess or the lines break-up and you can’t tell what it is. If you insist on having an illustration as your logo, reduce it down to about 1”x1” so you can see how it would look on a business card; or ½”x ½” which is the average size for a mailing label. Another test would be to send it via fax at the business card size and look at the breakdown of the illustration. You want your brand to be crisp and clear in whatever medium it is viewed in.
6. Eliminate Special Effects – You know, I think glows, drop shadows, bevels, and outlines are just as cool as the next guy. Just not for a logo. You can’t reproduce a glow in black and white, or a drop shadow when your logo is reversed out on a dark background. If you have a logo that incorporates any special graphical effects, save them for the web. But make darn sure that your logo is just as clear and definable when you take the effect away and print it in black and white.

7. Don’t use basic business tools - A lot of people are really good at using Microsoft Word, Publisher or PowerPoint for creating documents,brochures and flyers. The problem is that anyone familiar with these applications can tell when they where used to create a logo. So spare yourself the embarrassment and don’t use these applications to create your brand.

My last piece of advice, and this is not a plug to use our agency (while it would be nice if you chose to work with the Art of Zen Studios), but I strongly suggest that you use a professional designer versed in Brand Design to do your logo for you. They will do the research, make sure your brand can be trademarked, and ensure that you won’t have any of the problems I discussed above. And just as a side note, unless your 10 year old granddaughter is a professional designer, don’t use her cute drawing for your logo. While I am sure it is the cutest thing ever, you will never be taken seriously or be able to develop a strong enough brand that you can grow your business on. And that is the ultimate goal, building a brand that everyone will instantly recognize (Think Nike, Apple, McDonald’s Golden Arches). Cause once you do that, you can claim a high stake in your market. And that means lots of customers, and lots of money.