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Any graphic designer who develops logos
will tell you that logo design often represents a contradiction in terms
and, on the surface, defies conventional logic. As odd as that statement
may seem, it is none the less true on account of one word …”simplicity”.
Budget-conscious clients who want a logo designed often append their
request with the statement “We just want a simple design for our logo”.
Loosely translated, that statement is a subtle way of conveying to the
graphic designer that the client wished to keep costs down. Controlling
costs is certainly a prudent endeavor, however when designing a logo, in
other words “branding the company” simplicity is a far more complicated
process than “complicated” is! Since that probably still sounds illogical,
a short explanation is in order.
‘Simplicity’, by virtue of the word, means ‘less’ Now compare this for a
moment to writing a description of a house. The more words you use, the
more description of the house you are able to include. However, if
required to keep the description “short” (simple) using as few (less)
words as possible, the task becomes much more complicated and therefore
time consuming as each and every word must be chosen and placed as
carefully as possible to achieve the same descriptive result.
Therein lays the design dilemma of graphic designers who are asked to keep
a logo design “simple”. Consistent with the analogy above, this means the
designer must use as few elements as possible and those elements
themselves must be as simple as possible …while conveying the most
information visually. The task becomes more complicated than a writing
assignment, however, because while a picture may be worth a thousand
words, the ‘words’ conveyed to the eye, mind and imagination of a viewer
by a simple shape in a logo design make the crafting of that shape so much
more critical and complicated.
Designing a complex logo, with many elements, makes the graphic designer’s
task to much simpler because there are more elements that can be
incorporated into the design to deliver a message ..similar to an author’s
use of more words in a description! There is a metaphor to this concept in
photography because good black and white photography is considerably more
difficult than color. The reason for this is that color creates visual
entertainment by transmitting so much more ‘information’ (millions of
colors and hues) to the brain through the eyes. By contrast, black and
white photography is constrained to a mere 256 shades between black and
white. Therefore the difficulty and challenge of black and white is to
compensate by applying far more attention to subject matter and image
composition.
So now you should understand how logical the illogical statement was! Both
simple and complex logo designs are equally complicated for their own
reasons.
How Important is the Branding Your
Logo Creates?
The easy way to answer that question is to ask two questions;
1) How
important is it to you to be visible among all your competitors?, and
2)
How important is it to you to have brand recognition in the eyes of your
consumers?
Your logo is your unique ‘thumb print’ in the business world. Of all the
start-up costs in a business, many can seem more important than a little
picture or symbol for your business …right? Wrong. There is a great adage
that applies here …”You never get a second chance to make a good first
impression. When you are starting out, first impressions are particularly
important in absence of track records, testimonials and visibility …make
it a good one with a logo design by a professional graphic designer who
understands that knowing the ‘visual psychology’ of the market is as
important as knowing the art software he or she uses to design your logo.
Reference Pages for this article:
Simple Logo Design
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Complex Logo Design
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Logo and Crest Design Portfolio
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