About logos and how important it is to tell a story
+ the last 13 Toud stories told through logo
Instead of the beginning – a thought about logos
We receive very often requests for logo creation (logo only), or sometimes logo and website. What those who ask for this do not know is that making a logo from nothing is not only an impossible mission but also a useless mission, a wrong approach. We will argue why below. The saddest aspect about these requests is that the professionals in our trade have nurtured such a marketing/design culture and that many even create a logo and visual identity starting from nothing or too little. Moreover, this year we witnessed several national logo contests that had no trace of strategy but had names that resonated with the jury.
How about the logos?
The logo is part of what is called – visual identity – a set of graphic elements whose role is to differentiate a product/service/company/organization from the rest.
Visual identity refers to a set of elements related to “form”, not “essence” and whose role is to highlight what we can call “essence”. In other words, visual identity cannot exist without a strategy, that is, without an analysis of what a product/service/company/organization is. This analysis must also take into account the market (competitors, potential customers). In order to be able to think that you need a logo, you have to think about targeting, positioning, points of differentiation, branding elements, i.e. strategy.
Only after finalizing this part can you aspire to create a logo. This stage must not be “skipped” because without it a relevant logo cannot be built.
How should a logo be?
It happens very often that you see very beautiful, but irrelevant logos around, logos that do not express the essence of a brand, fail to communicate with the target, and are not related to the product/service/organization.
A logo should be:
- relevant – i.e. mirror the product/service/organization and be built for the target and in accordance with the market
- simple – it must be easy to understand, read, to remember
- symbolic – it is ideal to be able to create a symbol from a logo, i.e. to make it express the essence of the brand without boundaries, without analysis
- different – there are millions of logos around us, you have to build a logo about which there can be no confusion
What should we do in Romania (also about logos).
Logo design agencies must understand how harmful it is to sell logos without doing the strategy part. Experts in the field must express this absolutely necessary link between strategy and visual identity. Experts in the field must no longer get involved in the wrong initiatives of the type organized in Romania in 2017 (we only remember the initiative of Bucharest City Hall to create the city logo). And we would even say that it is necessary for business people to look for a partner in the marketing/design area after they have accumulated a minimum of knowledge to be able to make a correct validation.
Below we present the logos created by Toud in the last year. As we said above, they have no relevance if they are not related to the back story. We attached the story to each logo (click on the picture).
Instead of a conclusion, an idea that complements the above:
“If your stories are all about your products and services, that’s not storytelling. It’s a brochure. Give yourself permission to make the story bigger.” – Jay Baer
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