Four Characteristics of Successful Logos

When it comes to business, return on investment is the driving force behind almost any expenditure whether that be hiring a marketing assistant, purchasing new laptops for your sales team or hiring a design firm to create your next direct marketing campaign. While it’s easy to create metrics that measure the effectiveness of your latest email campaign, how do you measure the value of logo design?

For starters, logo and visual identity design rarely provide immediate results that are quantifiable. As an integral part of your brand a logo should last at least 5-10 years, and as such it helps to measure the success of your logo according to the four common traits of every successful logo — differentiation, flexibility, simplicity and memorability.

Fly Your Freak Flag

First and foremost, your logo must be differentiated. I don’t recommend being different just to be shocking, but in order to be a leader you do need to lead. Having a logo that looks similar to another company, or worse, your competitor will leave your target audience confused about who you are. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone to either OfficeMax of OfficeDepot, and not known which one I’m in. Aside from the names being too close, both logos cram the words together in a similar font, and the store interiors are nearly identical. I was happy when Staples opened in my area, because I don’t get them confused with the other two. It’s risky to be different, but not nearly as risky as being the same.

Stretch Your Brand Muscle

Every logo should work in black and white, at the size of a spitwad as well as the size of a billboard. By building this flexibility into your logo from the beginning you’ll be ensuring a healthier life span, and ease of use. It’s not uncommon to realize a couple of years after your slick, gloss logo premieres on your new website that you may want to embroider the logo on hats or employee shirts. How do you run a gradient or recreate that nice glossy highlight on your logo in thread? Keep your design limber, and you’ll have less injuries in future application.

Trim the Visual Fat

Just to clarify simple doesn’t mean it was just thrown together in a few minutes. It means stripping out the unnecessary shapes. The simpler your logo design the more flexible it is, and you’ll see an increase in memorability as well. Start by removing details of your logo mark. Determine what isn’t needed to support the silhouette, or help legibility. Keep subtracting shapes until your logo becomes unrecognizable, and then take a step back from there. Save the intricate illustrative work for your marketing materials where it’s more appropriate.

Leave an Impression

Brand adoption is dependent upon how memorable your whole brand experience is. At the center of your brand is your visual identity and logo design. Your customers should easily recall the look of your identity just by mentioning the company name or even the product category. Our brain doesn’t store data in large chunks, so simplicity and differentiation should help drive recall. After years of successful implementation brands like Target and more recently Starbucks are able to rely solely on their logo mark as a identifier. The less memorable your logo design the harder your marketing materials will have to work to constantly remind consumers of who you are. You don’t want that, and you’re customers don’t want that.

Judge your logo against these four criteria, and you’re on the right track to having a successful brand life cycle. Aesthetics, and whether you like or dislike your logo design are irrelevant to your ROI. When designed to incorporate differentiation, flexibility, simplicity and memorability an aesthetically pleasing design should be a natural byproduct.

To learn more about some common mistakes in logo design check out our article “Eight Reasons Why Your Logo Hates You.”

Spectrum Printing: A Study in Brand Differentiation

Defining the Problem

The print division of Premier Election Solutions was planning to spin off as an independent printer with a focus on variable data and mail automation. At the start of the project, the department handled ballot printing for the election systems sold by Premier, and had a strong presence in handling variable data within the small niche. The stakeholders named the new company Spectrum Printing, and I was approached to develop a logo, stationery system and basic logo usage guide. Spectrum is one of the most common names for a printing company which I discovered during the research phase. Changing the name wasn’t an option. Developing a logo and visual identity system that differentiated them from the spectrum of Spectrums became my focus.

Exploring the Solutions

I began by sketching 100 logos, evaluating the rough ideas and honing in on a few concepts to develop tighter sketches and type studies.

Ideas to explore further

Tight pencil concepts to be cleaned up

Creating the Form

After several rounds of refining the sketches, I presented a first look at three concepts in black & white.

Version 1 references a printed halftone pattern with a sleek, digital mark that doubles as a monogram for Spectrum. The connectivity of the individual dots and the hexagonal shape imply precision and science. The logo mark could become an icon used as a design element, pattern or even a photographic mask across the brand portfolio.

Version 2 is a nod to the old world craftsmanship associated with offset and even letterpress printing. The crest shape mimics shop signs of years past while the custom type adds a modern, digital edge to the overall feel. A printer’s loop placed on a halftone pattern within the crest references the attention to detail of Spectrum Printing.

Version 3 plays directly off the name Spectrum in that the shapes at the bottom merge to create the whole shape of the monogram. In addition, the monogram pays tribute to the rollers of traditional printing.

Mixing the Color Palette

The client zeroed in on the craftsmanship approach of version 2, and we took an opportunity to modify the crest shape to take on the appearance of an open envelope, allowing the logo to touch on both print and mail automation. The color studies focus on playing up the name Spectrum while grounding the color palette in the printing space. I presented a few options to push the palette outside of the expected cyan, magenta, yellow and black.

Finalizing the Solution

Ultimately, it was determined that keeping the CMYK reference outweighed the chance to own a unique palette in the space, though I was able to shift the colors slightly from the expected use, particularly with the yellow.

Applying the Identity

The stationery application brings the whole brand to life with the mark creating a nice patterned element, and business cards in four separate color schemes to keep the stationery fresh.

For more examples of logo and visual identity design work check out the Creative Squall site.

Untapped Creativity: Paint by Numbers Part 2

During the first part of my interview with CPA, Lynda Campbell, we talked about the creativity in sharing financial reports to communicate the right information to the right audience. In part two we talk about what creativity means to her personally.

How would you define creativity in its most basic form?

Creativity is being able to use your imagination to solve a problem or an issue.

Do you view it as both right and left brain?

Yes, because in my business it’s being able to use my imagination to see the problems the way other people in my company or a banker does and be able to provide them with the answers.

In your business, it’s being able to get a feel for what the client needs. You have to use your imagination to do that and put yourself in their shoes. And then be able to turn around and give them back what they need.

For you, it’s using your wonderful, artistic talents. For me, it’s putting numbers down on paper in a way that makes sense and answers the questions.

Do you feel that creativity always has to have some tangible outcome?

A doctor has to be creative to figure out what’s wrong with patients. A patient goes in with an ache or a pain. He’s got to use all of his knowledge and some creativity to pull all those different pieces of knowledge to come up with a solution to a person’s problem. Think of an attorney giving his summation speech to a jury, pulling together everything that’s been heard in court and maybe even a little bit that hasn’t (laughs) to come up with a presentation to the jury to sway them to his side of the argument. For an attorney who’s a corporate attorney it’s a little different. The form is already spelled out for them, but not totally. They’re filling in the blanks.

Different clients want different things, and they have to come up with a way to meet their needs. So, I think we all use it to some extent, but we don’t necessarily call it creative. We think of it as just using knowledge that we have.

Why do you think society as a whole only references creativity as artwork?

It’s a common perception. We’ve used creative to describe something an artist has done for so long that we kind of forget that creativity is a process. When you create something you’re not necessarily creating new colors — or a line is a line, a pencil is a pencil, a paintbrush is a paintbrush. And I’m oversimplifying, not to be insulting. But you’re using all of that with the talent you’ve been given to create something. We all use our knowledge to create whatever our final output is. It just may not be pretty. (laughs) But then all art isn’t pretty to me.

To me, what you do is art. You may be doing it for a reason, but it’s still art because I can’t do it. (laughs)

I think that’s part of it too. Sometimes when you can’t do something, it gives it a mystique. Different people react to that mystique positively or negatively. People talk about artists as being artsy fartsy, because they’re just not an artist and they don’t understand that. People think of accountants as being boring, and maybe we are. I don’t know.

Do you feel that creativity is something you’re born with like a talent, or is it something that you can hone and teach?

I think it’s a little bit of both. Some creativity is just innate. A lot of the people that I know in graphic design or artistic fields have drawn since they could first hold a crayon. It’s been a passion. For a lot them, they do it as easily as they breathe. Teaching problem solving which they don’t do enough of in school does teach creativity. It does teach you to use everything you can pull from around you, whether it’s knowledge you have in your head, or information you look up on the internet or at the library, to create a solution.

I do think that it is taught. I think some people may be more resistant to it, because I think you’ve got to have imagination. And some people don’t.

You mentioned that you were thinking about taking an art class.

Yes, I am! Painting.

I want to actually paint on a canvas. I have no idea of what it’s going to look like. (laughs)

No one does.

I don’t have a clue of what’s going to come out of it. I went to a deal a couple of months ago, and did wine glasses. Everybody just raved about my wine glasses. Well, they were just copying and expanding on something that our teacher had shown us. They weren’t exactly a creation from the start of zero kind of thing. So, I’d just like to see what I can do.

I think it’s something I’ve been interested in, for probably growing ten or fifteen years. Now, I’m at a time in my life where I have the opportunity to do it. I spent the last 22 years raising kids, working and doing all the things that are involved in that, and happily! No complaints at all. Talk about creativity, be a parent. (laughs) Now both of my kids are in college, and I’m an empty-nester.

I love to take pictures, so I’m also going to take some photography classes. Right now, what I take pictures of is high school football games. I want to branch out a little, and take something else. I love doing it.

Would you consider yourself an outwardly or inwardly creative person?

It’s kind of a mix. When I was working at Crowe Design Centers, we had big parties down there two or three times a year. At one of them, we had people come in and do handwriting analysis and tarot cards, all of that kind of stuff. As it was getting started, I did a handwriting analysis, and the women looked at my handwriting and said, “You’re very creative, yada, yada, yada.” Well, I was talking to the people I worked with about it, and they’re looking at me like “Yeah?!” (laughs) I had never thought of myself that way.

People have a tendency to think that if you’re creative you have to come up with great ideas all of the time. Creativity means you come up with things and you pull together ideas, but it doesn’t necessarily make it great.

Do I think the people I work with today think I’m creative? Probably not.

If you’d like to find out more about Lynda be sure to follow her on Facebook. Don’t forget to check out the other great Untapped Creativity interviews with Jeni Herberger, Nicole Dobbs, and Elizabeth Lalli-Reese.

Like what you see don’t forget to become a fan on Facebook. Check out the Creative Squall site to see how we’ve put imagination in action.

Untapped Creativity: Paint by Numbers Part 1

Several years ago I worked for another company called Mosaic, and I had the pleasure of working alongside Lynda Campbell, accountant extraordinaire. I leaned on Lynda for advice in late 2008, as I began laying the foundation for Creative Squall. She not only knows accounting inside and out, but she knows how to relate it to the audience she’s talking to. It’s her background in marketing and her experience in many different vertical markets that makes her one of my favorite accountants people to talk to. We spent some time talking about the creativity inherent to painting, photography and accounting. That’s right accounting. And we’re not talking cooking the books.

Tell us a little bit about your background and how you got  to where you are today.

I’m a graduate of Texas Tech University. I graduated from there in 1982. I have a bachelors of business administratin degrees in accounting and marketing. So, kind of an odd combination. I’ve always said I must be schizophrenic. (laughs)

I’ve worked in a number of industries. I’ve worked in commercial real estate. I have worked in plumbing wholesales. I have worked in advertising/graphic design. And I’ve worked in the gaming industry, not video games. I should say video poker or gambling gaming.

Now I work for a non-profit. So, I’ve kind of done a lot of different things, and one of the things that I’ve found is that accounting is accounting. You’re counting money, and reporting on it. The differences are in the way that the people in the different industries think. And I think that’s where my marketing background came in handy, making those transitions from industry to industry a little easier. That also allows me to speak English not accounting-ese.

Why did you decide to get a degree in both accounting and marketing?

When I first went to college, I was actually accepted at Texas Tech with the intent of being a civil engineering major. I switched to accounting, because I decided I really didn’t want to go with a degree that pretty much at that time was a four and half to five year degree. So, I switched to accounting and business. That’s what my dad was. And come to find out, I learned very early on that I think in debits and credits, not intentionally, before I even knew what they were. So that part of it came pretty naturally, but I wasn’t doing as well in accounting grade-wise as I had has always done through school. In my junior year, I started thinking about it and took some tests, and basically, they said I should be in either accounting or marketing.

I switched my major to marketing, and then discovered that I was only nine hours short of having an accounting degree. So, I stayed an extra summer, and got the accounting degree. As it turned out, I’ve never used the marketing. While I was in school, Sanger-Harris offered me a job. About a month before I finished my last class, Sanger-Harris sent me a letter that said, “I’m sorry, but due to the economy, we’re going to have to resend our offer.” So, the only jobs I could get were in accounting. I’m now, all these years later, a CPA, and I’ve been in accounting ever since.

Do you find that there are similarities between those two fields?

No. They really are left brain versus right brain.

One of the things that I did in my marketing classes was case studies. Where the accounting fits into the marketing is no matter what you’re doing you’re always trying to drive dollars one way or the other. So, in that respect, yes, they are similar. I don’t care what business you’re in, you have to make money, and you have to spend money. In that area, they relate to each other.

Marketing is all about telling people about a product. Accounting is counting the money. But in accounting you do have to realize that you do have customers just like a marketer does. That’s what people don’t realize. In accounting your customer is, if you’re in private industry, the other people that work at your company or that you report to outside — bankers, depending on the kind of field your in. My customers at a non-profit are the president, the chief operating officer, the head of our development department — which is the department that goes out and gets us donors — or the people in marketing. I have to give them the right kind of reports. So, in a way I market to them by giving them reports that they need to see, so they can account for what they’re spending or bringing in.

Do you find that the relationships are stronger since these are clients you see regularly?

Internally, the relationship is totally different. When you’ve got a client, your client has to believe in you in order to sign that contract to let you do whatever design you’re going to do for them or sell them whatever service you’re going to sell them. Internally, you’re more or less forced on the clients, in other words, the president, the COO or the CFO, whoever hired the people in accounting. So, the director of events has no choice in who’s hired. I have found that the image of the person who’s in the job prior to you can affect your relationship with your internal clients. In marketing or graphic design, you’re going to outside people, and although they may have prejudices towards your profession to some extent, they only hire you if they feel a connection to you.

Much like you can’t choose your family, but you can choose your friends.

That’s right. So, internally, those people have no choice. They have to work with me whether they like me or not. I do have the option of working on those relationships, because they are there daily. It still is just a very different relationship. They didn’t choose me like your clients choose you.

Most of them are good relationships. Don’t get me wrong.

Do you have a favorite vertical industry that you’ve worked in?

Commercial real estate is dry. It’s building.

In all of the industries, or most of them, I’ve enjoyed the people I’ve worked with. I found that the people, at the time, in the wholesale plumbing industry were very passionate about what they do, and I found the same thing in the graphic design industry. I love that passion. I haven’t really seen that so much in the other industries that I’ve worked in.

So, I guess, in plumbing that also sounds so weird. I mean you’re selling toilets and pipe, and the people in that industry at that time, when they got together, that’s what they talked about. No matter whether you stop to talk about the Cowboys or the Rangers or whatever, it always goes back to plumbing wholesale with them. I really enjoyed that.

Working at Mosaic, the individuals in the graphic design industry really love what they’re doing.

Almost to their detriment. (laughs)

Yeah, yeah. I think the other side to that which you and I touched on earlier in a private conversation about having to learn the business end of it is one of the issues of that industry. It’s being run by people who don’t really like the numbers. They’re extremely creative, but they don’t really enjoy the numbers. So, they don’t want to do it, and many don’t make themselves do it.

You’ve taken that step past that. You’re making yourself do it. You’re making yourself learn to like it. That’s kind of off the topic though. (laughs)

Not necessarily. You’re describing a little bit of a dichotomy between the creative side of stuff versus the accounting side. I know most people may look at what you lovingly call crunching numbers as not being very creative. Do you feel that’s a fair assessment of accounting?

When you talk about just accounting, it’s not necessarily creative. It is crunching numbers. It is recording the activity of the company. Where the creativity comes in — and I’m going to use that loosely, because the problem is people thinking it’s cooking the books, and that’s not what I’m talking about. That’s something totally different. That’s illegal. When you report to different people, different people need different information. So, the creativity comes in being able to pull the information together in a manner that makes sense to the people so that they can use it.

So, it boils down to creating better communication depending on who your audience is?

Exactly! You have to know your audience, and a lot of times that’s something you have to learn. But I’ve had more people come to me and say, “You know, Lynda, my accounting department just doesn’t get it. I can’t get good numbers out of them.” Well, that’s a communication issue. They’re not speaking the same language, and someone who has at least a little bit of creativity and can speak English can figure out what they need and how to provide that information. That’s the creative side.

If you’d like to find out more about Lynda be sure to follow her on Facebook. Check out part 2 of my interview with Lynda, and don’t forget to check out the other great Untapped Creativity interviews with Jeni Herberger, Nicole Dobbs, and Elizabeth Lalli-Reese.

Like what you see don’t forget to become a fan on Facebook. Check out the Creative Squall site to see how we’ve put imagination in action.

The Most Hated Color in America

If you’ve ever worked closely with color, then you’ve undoubtedly experienced the backlash associated with the color pink. American’s across the board despise the color, or do they?

Looking manly in pink

I’ve heard from numerous clients when developing visual identities that they absolutely do not want their brand associated with pink. Over my 16 year career this has been a constant. A cause that every business owner could stand against, and I originally wrote it off as a mild form of homophobia. Male business owners and CEO’s don’t want customers to think they are feminine. Is the default gender of all businesses masculine?

The color of the weak

Strangely, I’ve received much of the same feedback from the female business owners and CEO’s. One marketing director even went so far as to take a poll of the females in the office confirming with her less than scientific survey that grown women do not like the color pink. Pink has come to symbolize femininity, and some how that has become a negative trait. So why is pink even a color if it’s feared by men and women alike?

Don’t get the business blues

It’s easy to argue that babies are often dressed in blue or pink to indicate gender at a very young age. The odd thing is that blue doesn’t live on in adulthood as a masculine color. In fact it becomes gender neutral. Unlike pink, blue is one of the most loved colors in America. Notice how many corporate color schemes use blue and grey to represent their brands. When everyone’s wearing the same uniform it’s hard to be an individual. Break down the color walls and differentiate your brand even if that means flying your pink flag.

Operate in the pink

The reality is that American’s must like pink, but maybe it’s a guilty pleasure just like the fact that you’ll never admit to secretly singing The Wiggles when you’re kids aren’t around. Brands like Susan G. Komen, Mary Kay and Victoria’s Secret have built their empires on the color pink, and it’s no surprise that these industries speak to a femininity in America. However, have you ever considered the power of pink in brands like Pepto Bismal, Sweet Tarts, and Dunkin’ Donuts. None of these examples speak exclusively to females, and I’d even go so far as to say that there is nothing feminine about them. The common thread is that all of these brands own the colorspace they are in, and stand out from the crowded space of their vertical markets.

Pink comes in more shades than Barbie

Just because your default association with the word pink is Barbie’s dream house, doesn’t mean that’s the only option out there. Pink can be electric and tart when it’s pared with electric blue and radiant orange. It can be classical or vintage if you mute it and use it with brown. And it can even be warm and savory with the addition of yellow. It helps to think in terms of the feeling your brand is trying to evoke rather than the label “pink” and all of the baggage that comes with it.

It’s time to let pink out of the closet, and embrace it as a powerful color that extends beyond the shallow connotations of gender and femininity. We need move away from the perception that business is masculine and embrace the reality that a successful business is both masculine and feminine. Build your brand color around your audience and differentiate your approach from the competitors. While they are playing it safe and blending in to the other blues and greys, you’ll let your true color shine and connect to your target market in a memorable and meaningful way.

For more information on developing a color palette, be sure to check out my article “1980 Called, and It Wants Its Color Back.”

Crowdsourcing: The Super Great Design Buffet

The practice of crowdsourcing has become a heated topic in the business and graphic design world in the last few years, and the continued flood of new sites launched to capitalize on the buzz shows that it isn’t going away anytime soon. Businesses seemingly love it, because they get more options for less money increasing their ROI in theory. Graphic designers hate it, because it makes it hard to compete while targeting the small business owner. While it is true that crowdsourcing can potentially save a company money in the short-term, it’s important to understand that it comes at a cost which often effects the long-term success of your brand.

What is Crowdsourcing?

For those not familiar with the term, dictionary.com defines crowdsourcing as utilizing (labor, information, etc.) contributed by the general public to (a project), often via the Internet and without compensation. A lot of times this is done under the guise of a contest to raise awareness for a product, service or even a brand. Companies post the parameters of the contest, and get to chose from hundreds of entries from around the world. It’s true that some contests have prizes for the winning solution, but it’s extremely below the revenue that the solution will generate for the company and negates the fact that 99% of the contestants receive no compensation for their efforts. While this seem like a winning solution from a marketing budget perspective, the fact is that your long-term ROI will suffer.

Has Your Brand Been Drinking Gravy?

Crowdsourcing work is the cheap Chinese food buffet of the design world. Anyone that goes to a buffet isn’t looking for a quality dining experience, and crowdsourcing design follows the same model. They don’t want the expertise that comes from having a chef prepare a signature dish, or a wait staff that can recommend the best beer paring for their meal. They’re looking for a lot of food for the smallest price, as well as, the bloating that often comes after. Practice this enough, and your brand will need a by-pass just to reconnect with your target audience and realign with your goals.

Would you like another slice of milk-toast?

Successful design solutions will never be created in a crowdsourcing format. Successful design only comes from the partnership formed with the design team and the client. The constant push and pull between all of the stakeholders is what drives creative solutions that speak to a focused audience. Out of great strategy comes great solutions, and crowdsourcing doesn’t allow an opportunity to develop strategy first. Without strategy you’re spending your budget on creating a good looking piece of art that is flimsy, that appeals to no one.

Don’t Eat Off Someone Else’s Plate.

Plagiarism is a major problem with crowdsourcing, and always will be. Without working with your design team, or even meeting them, you might just be buying a nice knock-off leaving you with a logo that can’t be trademarked, and a lawsuit from from the one that was. When you work with a design team, you’re actually paying for their process, expertise and insight to alleviate your fears in implementing a differentiated brand element. You’re not buying what gets produced, and you certainly shouldn’t be buying someone’s leftovers.

Heartburn in Every Flavor Imaginable

Most companies that resort to crowdsourcing are probably not clients that a professional designer would want to work with. Lots of work for little money is never a model that works for long-term success, and that’s at the heart of the crowdsourcing industry. If you think the buffet is great then there is no amount of explanation that can convince you to explore a healthier approach to building your brand. However, if you’ve only experienced graphic design through crowdsourcing, then engaging a professional designer may be the Pepto Bismal that your brand needs.

I’m not advocating that crowdsourcing shouldn’t be a source for businesses owners needing to cut costs, however it’s important to understand the difference in working with a designer and working with a crowd. Unbeknownst to me, I had a client try a crowdsourcing site for logo design. When they had a horrible experience, they brought the project to me and told me that they were shocked at how bad the designs were. In the long run, they learned the value of working with a dedicated professional, and I have since made it a part of my practice to discuss crowdsourcing with a client before we begin an engagement. Crowdsourcing sites do have a place in design. It’s just on the outer edge of the design community, and it’s important that you understand what you’re not getting for that price.