Your Logo HereEssentials for a successful business logo

Remember the phrase, “Kilroy was here?”Sometime before WWII, a doodle with that phrase began to appear sporadically, and during the war it seemed ubiquitous. It became so omnipresent that, according to one story, at the Potsdam conference following WWII, Stalin emerged from the bathroom and asked, “Who is Kilroy?”Now that is a successful insignia.Your logo is your “Kilroy was here” signature. You want users to store your logo in their minds so that next time the user sees the logo, he instantly associates it with your company and what it offers.

The irony of creating a good logo is that you may not have to spend much to create a good one (as Microsoft, Google and a few other giants can testify) but you will need a large supply of patience to give your logo every chance to succeed.One can easily get lost in the nuts-and-bolts of logo design, but here are the most crucial elements for a successful logo:

ColorColor can dramatically increase brand recognition and comprehension. What feelings do you want to convey in your customer: passion, excitement (red)? Blue (calmness, trustworthy)? Green (nature, pastoral)? Or maybe you want to project glamour and exclusivity (black)?And FYI: the most popular colors by Fortune 500 companies are blue, black and red. Fonts

The font should reflect your company and complement the color scheme. Try and stay away from decorative, hard-to-read fonts. The most commonly used fonts are Sans-Sarif and Helvetica.

Shape & symmetryMany popular logos use shapes and patterns. Using clean cut lines and recognizable shapes are an easy way to catch the consumer’s eye and also sear the logo into their memories

TextDo you feel text should accompany your logo? Let’s compare two examples: Nokia: Connecting People and Focused Graphics: Large Format Printing Solutions. At least 80% of the world’s population knows who Nokia is (or was). If the company called Focused Graphics didn’t add that text, you couldn’t tell what it did simply from the logo.

Visual DesignRemember, your logo will need to look good on a wide spectrum of medium: print (stationary, business cards, letterheads, clothing items), online, mobile, etc. You will need to make sure it looks good on all formats.

Keep it simplemake it easy on the eyes of the readers. What looks cool in the office can look very uncool to the customer.

ScalabilitySince you do plan to use your logo on multiple channels, your logo should be as clear as possible; Vector graphics are recommended.

X-nay on clip artas much as some of us would love it, we aren’t in the 90’s anymore. Clip art is out, and using it projects unprofessionalism, not to mention that it looks generic

One more thing….

You can have a great looking logo, but if it’s not relevant to what it represents, it’s pretty much useless. Having an inappropriate logo may give the wrong impression, detour potential customers and ultimately hurt sales. Is your emphasis on speed? Or on service? On Business or entertainment? If your business is cars, for example, there’s no point in using palm trees or a giant neon globe.

Thanks