A successful logo necessarily complies with at least three fundamental premises of communication that make it a powerful message that contains the values and mission of a company or organization. If you are in the process of creating your logo or want to improve it, the considerations that we develop below are for you.
The logo is a symbol or visual seal created by the union of text, letters, or images, together or separately, that allow a company or product to be identified and, above all, allows the activities that are related to it to be linked. This means that a logo cannot be referred only to reflect the name of the company, it should go further and integrate, at least roughly, what its ultimate purpose is.
To achieve this goal, there are several actions that can lead the public, increasingly visually literate, to understand what the logo represents or communicates. To achieve this objective, graphic designers use visual strategies such as the use of colors, fonts, images or backgrounds that are not taken at random, but rather respond to very clear intentions. In this sense, there are at least three considerations that you should know before your logo goes on the market, or that you can add if you want to improve it. These are:
1.- Choose between a logo, imagotype, isotype or isologo
These four terms may seem new or confusing to you if you haven't studied graphic design. This is because commonly any graphic representation of a company is often mistakenly called a logo. Hence, many people fail to identify what they want or what is best for their company.
Let's start with the logo, this modality is usually used to encompass all types of visual references because they are the ones that most closely resemble the old stamps that only included a word or the initials of the royal house or workshop. It is clear then that a referent current logo is the use of the initials or the word of the company or organization, such as Google. The Imagotype, for its part, is a pair in which a figure and a word are inserted that do not merge, we have as a reference Amazon (word and an underlined line) or YouTube that includes the word and the button play. The isotype has lately become one of the most sought after and recommended options when it comes to refreshing a logo, since it is a graphic image that encompasses the name of the company, as is the case with Twitter (blue bird) or Apple (apple ). To finish these descriptions we have the isologo, in which there is an evident union between a text and an image. We see it in the logo of Burger King or Starbucks.
It is important that you understand that none of these typologies is better than another, each one has a specific meaning and importance depending on the communicative function they want to fulfill.
2.- make it readable
Legibility in logo design goes hand in hand with communicative success. Your idea can be beautiful and innovative, but if it is not understood or readable, it would become a piece of art and not a communicative element. So be careful, and don't overdo it with elements such as shading, gradients, very new fonts or color games.
3.- Design a timeless logo
A timeless logo is one that respects the rules of graphic and visual communication, and that does not get carried away by temporary styles such as the use of certain fonts or backgrounds. It is also one that, although he knows and understands his competition and does a Benchmark study, does not imitate his competition and is absolutely original. In this sense, the recommendation is that the logo of your company be prepared by a graphic designer so that he creates exclusive fonts and figures for you and that they are taken from a template.
Finally, remember that common sense, balance and simplicity can lay the foundations of what will be a truly communicative logo.
Author: Juliana Mendez, He is a postgraduate student in Business Communication and a columnist in his spare time. He also advises small Graphic Design companies that work with Business Image.
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