Logo and Print

Creating the right first impression

IPO Digital Design can work with you to help create a personalised corporate identity that portrays the right message to the right audience and starts your company on the path towards success.

Memorable visual communication of your company’s ideals is pivotal to the future placement of your business amongst competing brands in the minds of potential customers.

IPO Digital Design can help ensure that your first step is a move in the right direction with...

• Effective logo design
• Internal communications (business cards, letterheads, email footers)
• Purposeful tag lines and press copy
• Uniform branding

Below are a few examples of some of the many thousands of business cards, corporate logo designs and print material produced by IPO Digital Design over the years...

Background

Logo Design Rules

An effective logo must achieve many goals for its owner, chief amongst them the guidelines for visual consistency in website and printed material development. Think of all of the leading brand logos you have been unconsciously bombarded with (Apple, Microsoft, TV channels, Shampoos etc) and you’ll notice that their design is not memorable because of clever tricks with visuals or catchy tag phrases, but because they all follow the rule of S’s, which are...

• Simple
• Scalable
• Sticky
• Saturation

Simple

Their ability to be remembered, and recalled, so quickly lies in their simplicity - use of block colours (often primary colours) and a simply visual area that is not reproduced in any other media so that the brain will categorise it as unique. An effective logo can be as simple as an orange square with a white “R” in the top left corner, and as long as there are no existing logos that look similar, it can’t be associated with anything other than the experience received whilst viewing it for the first time (so if the logo appears on a website devoted to cooking equipment, then recall of the logo will immediately bring to mind that subject).

Scalable

An effective logo has to maintain visual consistency at different sizes so that it can be reproduced on business cards, letterheads, websites, name badges, staff uniforms, TV commercials, and billboards equally. This further reinforces the need for simplicity, and the ability for the logo to stand on its own merits without an accompanying tag phrase.

Sticky

More of an internet phrase, ‘sticky’ refers to a visual elements ability to be remembered and at the forefront of memory recall on a particular topic. For example, when you think of purchasing carpet for your home (which is not an everyday task therefore your memory kicks in and tries to recall past advertising exposure) which name comes to the forefront? Most probably Cavalier Bremworth or Feltex, due to their New Zealand television campaigns.

Saturation

Our brains are filling up with imagery at the rate of 4 million signals per second, so in order to maintain ‘top rank’ positioning it is imperative that logos are seen again and again. Repetition serves just that primary purpose, and as much as you convince yourself that advertising “goes in one ear and out the other” it subconsciously reinforces positioning of branding. Big companies spend millions of dollars every year fighting for that recall top spot in your brain.

If you’re on a smaller budget you can still achieve great success by associating positive experiences with your logo, instead of repetition, and letting people naturally aspire the branding awareness. A positive experience can be defined by a helpful phone conversation with your staff, a trusted recommendation from a friend or reputable news source, or a helpful and informative user experience with your website (see usability analysis).

As you might have already gathered, it is imperative to choose an effective logo that will serve your company well into the foreseeable future right from the offset because any “stick-ability” gained will be immediately lost with a rebranding that alters a recognised logo to a large degree.

Techniques

Effective Logo creation is best achieved by following a research-design-review cycle as outlined...

Client Brief

I try to get a feel for what the client wants to “say” with their logo, what is the “meaning” that they want viewers to be left with? What aspect of their business is seen as distinguishable - Size, service, quantity, price etc? I have had the good fortune to have designed some leading brand logos in New Zealand that are still in service many years later, and in all cases where a logo wasn’t approved it has been due to a second hand client brief – make sure that the brief you do is with the person within the company that will have the final say.

Research Industry

I then take a look at what others within the same industry are doing. The intention is not to copy them, merely to gain a feel for the quality and trends the target audience are likely to be previously exposed to. Have iconic visuals been overdone? E.g. there are too many builders’ logos with house outlines in them, and dentists with smiling teeth.

Sketching Concepts

Then begins a series of pencil sketches (without colour) to try and create a unique look that emanates the desired impression. This process is the longest, and often most frustrating, part of logo design and requires frequent breaks to empty the designers internal visualisation canvas. Colour is then added being mindful of the emotive “temperature” of colour (e.g. blue is cold but also fresh, red is fast and hot but also dangerous).

Review the brief

What I should have at this stage is up to five unique designs that focus on different strengths of the branding. Next comes decision time, which often requires dropping some designs from consideration after cannibalising their better aspects. A review of the original design brief is the criteria used to decide which designs will advance and which will be shelved.

Presentation

Probably the most important aspect of the logo presentation is not to overburden the client with too many choices that head in separate directions, since they are likely to appreciate parts of each of the designs and want to view them combined – which never works and usually results in multiple design alterations that end up back where you started. Present one design as a clear leader and keep a second on standby as a backup. Wherever possible I try to present the first visual on a separate page with lots of white space and then back it up with visuals of the design in use (business cards or letterheads).

Documentation

All logos have a mission, an objective that they were designed to achieve, and accurate documentation of that objective is required to ensure that anyone utilising the logo in their material is not harming that intent. A printed guideline that describes correct usage, colours (in all possible ink/paint/screen combinations), and vision is supplied to the client.