Did you know that you may be exposed to as many as 5000 logos a day? How many of these do you remember? How many of these are just plain forgetful? Getting a customer to notice or remember a logo is a very difficult thing to do. Bad ones won’t help your cause. When you set out to create your logo, be sure to avoid these five critical mistakes:
1. Drawing Your Logo Yourself
Many bad logos are designed because a business owner tries to do it themselves. They need something fast, so they create it “in-house” or ask a friend to do it. Unless this friend is a true logo designer (with a marketing bent!), your potential for getting a bad logo is significant. An unprofessional logo can keep customers from buying your products, and even diminish trust among your current customers. How deep are your pockets in order to survive a lack of customers?
2. Forgetting About Your Prospects
Many business owners choose a logo based on their own tastes. They’ll select fonts, colors, and icons that appeal to them. The problem is, they are often not their own ideal customer. Is your target market affluent and seasoned (read: rich senior citizen)? Unless you are also in that target group, before designing your logo, find out as much as you can about your potential customers. Are they men or women? Single or married with kids? Young or old? Are they looking for a conservative image, or something more progressive? The more you know about your customer’s tastes, the more easily you can develop the image that will appeal to them.
3. Looking Too Much Like Your Competition
This is a simple mistake to make. After all, your competitors are successful, so why not mimic what they do? If they’ve spent the time on a good logo and marketing, and are successful with it, join ‘em! Right?
Perhaps not. Not to get legal – but there might be trademark infringements to consider. Then, if they are similar, when your logo resembles someone else’s, you will lose customers who confuse your product with the competition. Instead, choose colors, shapes, icons and fonts that set your business apart. By contrasting your own logo and brand image to your competition, you’ll help customers easily identify your business and services.
4. Trying To Communicate Too Much With Your Logo
Small businesses often make the mistake of creating a logo that says too much or too little, which ends up communicating nothing at all. Instead, focus on a single image that your customer can remember. Think of the myriad of logos with swooshes, world orbits, and swirly lines. These logos are so non-descript that they simply don’t help identify or brand the company. Just because Nike did it once, and spent billions on advertising to help you identify it, doesn’t mean that it will work for you on your very limited budget.
Additionally, many small businesses also make the mistake of adding words like Inc, Corp, or LLC to their logos. Most often, they do this to look like a big conglomerate. But in reality, even the big boys don’t use their business designation in the logo. Think of five of your favorite brands – do any of them include the words Inc. or Corp. in their logos?
5. Thinking That Colors and Fonts Don’t Matter
Does your logo need to convey a health or cleanliness? Consider using shades of green, which suggest health and prosperity. Do you want to grab a prospect’s attention? Reds convey boldness, power, excitement, and strength. Think of the leading companies that use red as their primary color, such as EXXON and Target. Perhaps your logo needs to convey trust. Blues represent authority, dependability, and responsibility. That’s why you will see blues in financial institutions and large software companies; companies like New York Life, IBM and Microsoft.
Be careful with colors! Too many colors make a logo difficult and expensive to print. Virtually every recognized logo is made up of just one or two colors.
Keep it simple. The same principle also applies to fonts. You want your logo to be readable from a distance, and yet not ordinary. There are literally thousands of different fonts to choose from; some fonts are elegant, while others are bold, or traditional. The font you choose needs to support the product or service that it represents.
