Logos

A corporate logo serves to establish an identity and relationship for the company and its products with its target customers. The corporate logo form design and colors are usually preserved over many years to build instant customer recall. Redesigning logos is attempted mainly when there are changes in the company’s ownership, such as during a merger or acquisition or when the company’s business undergoes a significant change. In any redesign, the attempt is to retain the brand recall value from the earlier design while communicating the new message the company wishes to convey.
Logo makeovers are expensive to implement with the change needing to be made on everything from product packaging, company stationery, signboards, postcard printing materials and perhaps even employee uniforms.

Logo design is a tricky graphic art form with the designer needing to come up with a design different from anyone else and serving to convey the essence of the company’s business or product in a form that fosters brand recognition. The designer’s job is further complicated by the fact that he does not get much interaction with the customers at whom the logo is aimed. The acceptance or rejection of his design is by senior company executives who may have their own prejudices.

Here is a look at some examples of logo changes that appear to have enhanced the product or company image and some that appear to fall short.

Logo redesigns that are improvements

Skittles are multicolored candy drops made by Wrigleys, one of the operating divisions of the $30 billion chocolate and Candy Company Mars. Skittles has sales of over $150 million and there are several other brands offering a similar product. In 1974 the company added the tagline “Taste the Rainbow”, that captured the essential sales message that the candy was in multiple colors and tasted great. The product logo depicted rainbow colors and the theme was reproduced on the packaging.

The 2010 redesign by the British designer Miles Newlyn made the new logo as a rainbow colored tongue that captured the message of the tagline and maintained continuity of the color schemes and depiction that Skittles had used previously.

It is of course not clear why Skittles needed a new logo and if the change has had any effect on customer perception of the product or the company. The logo change, however, meets the test of the change not harming the continuity of the brand image.

Toys R Us logo change

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A logo design is created on three significant pillars namely symbol, typography and color. While color and symbol are crucial to the development of a brand identity, typography plays a pivotal role in crafting a successful logo. When logo designers participate in a logo design contest, they are up against numerous designers and face an uphill task to impress the project holder. In order to make an impact on the client, you must come up with creative and original designs concepts that will amaze your target audience.

Hence, if designers wish to create a solid impression on their prospective client, they must conceive unique and creative concepts for logo designing. For this purpose, the creative use of typography is a useful technique. By mending and bending the typeface of the logo, one can craft a superb design concept. For instance, you can convert the letter ‘E’ into 3 to connote a dual meaning into the brand identity.

In order to give you an inspiration and idea of how to use typography creatively, here are 25 splendid examples of typography logos.

1. Quarx

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Using negative space in logo design is increasingly gaining popularity among logo design artists. Logo designer should know how to handle positive and negative space effectively. In this roundup we are featuring some negative space logo designs. Enjoy!

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For those of you who are unaware of the concept of Crowdsourcing, let me start off by giving a brief history. Crowdsourcing initially began when the term was invented by Jeff Howe in 2006. It is built around the concept of starting an online project where clients can pool in the resources of a group of creative people. This innovative idea gained immense popularity and was implemented by the design industry as well. The earliest site to launch an online design contest was 99designs. Soon after, the trend skyrocketed as more sites like MycroBurst, CrowdSPRING and LogoTournament emerged.

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Choosing a new logo design for your business can be a difficult task. How can you use your logo to communicate your brand and keep your business in the minds of your customers? A great logo design is the first and most important step towards ensuring that customers remember your brand. Designing a logo which is memorable, yet communicates your brand’s personality, is a huge challenge.

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A multicolored logo can look attractive and appropriate with Selecting the right combination of colors. In this next post, we will be showcasing some attractive multicolor logo designs that we hope will inspire you and give you ideas for creating your own logo.

Wurkit Logo

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The principal cause of a logo design is to convey the brand message to its customers. But without a solid concept, the logo will be fruitless for any corporate identity. This is because a logo without concept gives a vague and faceless representation for any business. Major brand identities like FedEx, Nike and Apple all possess logos that are not only conceptual, but also meaningful.

The most crucial process for a designer is to incorporate a meaningful concept in the logo. The idea is to create an allusion of the company’s purpose using creative symbols and techniques. A perfect example of this is FedEx logo that ingeniously incorporates an ‘arrow’ between the letters ‘E’ and ‘x’. Even though the design of this famous logo is simple, the conceptual framework is highly intricate.

In order to give you a better idea of how to create conceptual logos, here are 22 creative ideas of how to convey the company message in the right way in a logo design.

Musical Store

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Not every web designer has a graphic design background. An even smaller number have a specialised skillset in identity or logo design. So what to do if your client asks to design them a logo in the course of your relationship, and you’re time-poor and not a graphic designer to boot? You could attempt the design yourself, and this might suffice as a placeholder within the design. There is an alternative if you want to deliver a top job for your client – head to a ready-made logo marketplace that offers premium creative logo designs for sale.

You might not now but recently the world’s biggest logo marketplace Brandstack.com was acquired by DesignCrowd. It’s since been relaunched as BrandCrowd a marketplace for designers looking to sell any unused logos and for anyone hunting for a logo design.

It’s a repository of high quality unused designs offering a great experience for buyers and sellers:

1. Only high-quality designs are displayed so buyers browse through a well-designed set of logos organised into keyword and industry categories.
2. Designers focus on creativity (no client driven briefs).

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Color can be an important visual communications device that can intimately affect the psychology of the observer on a subconscious level. It can help determine a consumer’s relationship with a given product or company and play an important role in branding.

Color can evoke a wide variety of emotion and even memories. An individual’s interpretation of color will depend on factors like their age, nationality, profession, interests, and personal preference.

It therefore can’t be stated strongly enough that to use color effectively, you must completely understand your target audience.

For example, when faced with a new product, consumers place color and visual appearance (93%) above other factors such as texture (6%) and sound and smell (1%). It’s also interesting to note that 85% of shoppers cite color among the main reasons for why they buy a product.

And other studies have shown that color increases brand recognition by as much as 80%. That’s an amazing statistic when you consider that branding relates directly to customer confidence.

You’d be wise to consider the ramifications of color when designing a logo. Here’s a basic guide to the psychology of color…

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Several factors contribute in building brand identity of a company. Logo design of a company is one of these factors. Millions of dollars are spent in designing and redesigning of corporate logos. Famed logos of world’s leading brands have some crucial elements that are common in their logo design.

Observing and learning from logo design of these leading brands can be a rewarding and interesting experience. Let us have a brief look at logos of some big brands and then find out what are common elements in their design.

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