All Things Change: Including Logos!

A logo is often a viewer’s first impression; therefore it is essential that it represent its company accurately and quickly.

Your logo should signify what you’re selling. What is your product? I’m not asking whether it’s a radio or a can of soup or a cleaning service. I’m asking you to think about your mission statement and the image of your product. For instance, if it’s a radio, would that be a sleek, sophisticated radio that fits in a business-suit pocket? Or a utilitarian, large-sized box that can be hand-wound during a power cut or when you’re camping in the woods? Is your cleaning service an upscale Persian-carpet cleaner? Or a sterilizer of hospital equipment? You see how many variables there are? A logo should reflect the vein of a specific company.

Another aspect of logos is to keep longevity in mind. And although it is true that companies change over time, often evolving their logos with them, it’s a good idea to do this slowly, over years, so that consumers don’t think the product has suddenly disappeared. However, progression of a logo may be because of reasons other than an expanding firm.

Think of Canon cameras, originally called Kwanon. See the initial logo below.

Follow the progression and you’ll see two reasons for the changes. The first logo, although beautiful, was not scalable (see my earlier post about scalability: “Logos, Icons, Pictograms, Photographs in Social Media”). It also was not a familiar image or name in the western world at the time.  Kwanon is the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy – how many people in the West know that now, let alone 70 years ago when this Japanese logo was launched?

Gradually, the name changed, the picture was eliminated and the colour enhanced to a more specific spot colour. Remember from my earlier post, “Colour and Your Brand,” that viewers notice red objects very quickly, and that red symbolizes power and strength. Just about everyone now recognizes the Canon logo in an instant and knows it to represent a reliable camera.

Trivia break: Did you know that logos have existed for thousands of years? If you think about it – one thing logos say is “I made this.” And potters in ancient Greece and Egypt were inscribing their personal marks or initials onto the bottoms of their pots and bowls since way before the pyramids were built. It was a way to advertise themselves and their abilities.

Today, a good logo delivers a unique message about a particular company – and the most effective ones are instantly recognizable whether button-sized or billboard sized.

 

 

Logos, Icons, Pictograms, Photographs in Social Media

 

Most of us are aware that viewers respond to pictorial signs, for we are visual creatures and remember things we see – especially images.

Those in advertising know pictures are key to marketing, and these include logos, icons, pictograms and photographs. So what’s the difference between these four? Below are short definitions as they relate to the world of business.

Logo

In marketing, a logo is a graphic depiction or representation of a company name and is designed for instant recognition. As mentioned in my last post, a logo can consist of just an image, or it can be a logotype, or a combination mark.

 

 

The important elements of logos are scalability, and adaptability to both colour and black and white. The first of these, to be scalable, is because the logo must be identifiable within any media – for instance, in a large format for a billboard poster or else reduced in size for a thumbnail web graphic. For this reason, vector-based logos are more common.  As for colour versus black and white: most logos generally will be produced in colour, but they need to be recognizable in black and white too. How else would logos stand out if company brochures were photocopied, for example? A well-designed logo will be seen and known at any size and in any colour/non-colour format.

 

Icon

Icons are graphic depictions like logos, but utilized differently. They started out being used in a mainly informative manner – and still are – but now icons are also an entertaining way to convey messages. Examples of an icon’s use are as metaphorical or abstract analogies that a reader can understand quickly; for instance, a cursor turning into a pointy-hand when a line of text is linked and clickable. Icons are great at fulfilling functions on tablets and smartphones where a screen can’t hold sufficient explanatory text.

 

As well, icons can be animated: lines visually pulsate, buttons change colour when activated, cartoon characters move. Emoticons are a good example of moving icons: they are entertaining for they smile and wink at us, poke their tongues at us, and nod their cute little heads.

Well-thought-out icons are understood globally, across boundaries of language. This is why commonplace figures such as hands, vehicles, geometric shapes, animals and humans make the best figures for icons.

Pictogram

These are for guidance and are used to protect and warn the viewer; therefore they must be instantly decipherable.

 

There is an art to creating simple, single images that convey very clear messages. Pictograms, like icons, must cross cultural lines and be understood regardless of language. Therefore they must resemble that which they signify, or else be globally agreed up signs. Pictograms as such are not often used in the advertising world to market products, but they are important in keeping us from walking off a cliff…

 

 

     

Photograph

In marketing, an effective shot of the merchandise – think shoes, cars, lipstick – or an image demonstrating a lifestyle the merchandise gives us – think hammock on the beach; being admired by observers; jumping for joy – can do wonders for getting viewers to realize the benefits of your product.

Photographs are not logos, but can be as memorable and are another tool for alerting your clients and enabling them to recall your image when shopping around. One trend in contempory advertising is to use photographs of people performing a function or animals making eye-contact with the viewer.