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An alternative way of attaining a contemporary logo design is to go through many online contests or crowd sourcing websites that are popping up all over the internet. Are these really a good idea, however? Can companies really get a modern brand logo of equal quality for a far cheaper price? This is the very issue we’re going to discuss in the following article.

Whether it’s problem-solving, innovation, or efficiency, crowdsourcing relates to the practice of engaging a group of people for a common goal. It’s all due to the growing connectivity that it has become easier for individuals to share ideas and expertise collectively for a project or cause. In a nutshell, this collective mobilization is called crowdsourcing.

“Crowds are a hit. Millions of people, connected by the Internet, are contributing ideas and information to projects big and small. Crowdsourcing, as it is called, is helping to solve tricky problems and providing localized information. And with the right knowledge, contributing to the crowd — and using its wisdom — is easier than ever.”

-The New York Times

The Types

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If you’re searching for a specific logo design, you can simply go ahead and tell your designers what you want, how you much you are willing to pay, and your deadline. All interested workers will create a ready-to-use design, especially for your brand. Crowdsourcing can also be used to get designs for fashion magazines, advertisements, and videos. Just about anything that is designable can be crowdsourced.

Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding involves asking people to donate money for your project. For instance, if you want to raise 20,000 dollars for a studio record, crowdfunding can help you raise that amount. With the deadlines typically less than 60 days, you must raise 100 percent of your goal before it, or all the donations will have to be returned to the donors.

Microtasks

As the name suggests, micro-tasking involves breaking work into tiny tasks and distributing it amongst a crowd of people. So, if you need captions for 1000 photos on your website, for instance, you can ask 1000 people to add one caption per photo.

With micro-tasking, you can expect to see results within minutes, and usually with less errors. Tasks such as scanning images, database correction, proofreading, and transcribing audio files are also included in micro-tasking.

Logos and crowdsource: The interchangeability

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Although there are few subtle differences between the two, the terms ‘logo design contest’ and ‘crowd sourcing’ are often used interchangeably. While in the world of logo design, the term crowdsourcing refers to logo contests, the term is also used for legitimate business pursuits.

Crowdsourcing can be a viable activity, especially if you’re using it to gain insight or get in touch with your consumer base. In this context, you are asking a group of customers to be creators, with payment agreed on in advance. Instead of being asked to perform highly specialized work, they merely offer a real-world perspective.

The beneficiaries of crowdsourcing

Like any other skilled service, designing a logo can be pricey. Many small to large business owners, weighed down by start-up expenses, look to save pennies at every turn. If you can get an adequate company logo at a cheaper rate, then why not avail that option, right?

Furthermore, crowdsourcing sometimes offers an even better product than traditional design agencies. It’s amazing to see how a huge group of talented people can produce a better pool of ideas than a single designer, no matter how trained or experienced.

For business personnel, upfront work takes less time via crowdsourcing because there are no in-person meetings with designers or offering minute-to-minute feedback on a continuously evolving project until it is executed perfectly.

However, there is one clear winner in logo design and crowd sourcing contests: the companies that run the websites offering these services. The acceptance of crowdsourcing is exactly what the design profession needs to shed the conceited label Forbes has assigned it. So, without further ado, here is a list of reasons why you could possibly consider crowdsourcing for your next logo design project.

1. Working with a creative community

Logo designers and web designers, who don’t understand the importance of originality, usually continue issuing copied work in design contests. There are many design firms that create projects on what they believe is best for their clientele; and while they are at it, the less qualified design agencies bend their preferences to satisfy their customers, and consequently, earn the business. With crowdfunding, on the other hand, the designers have no compulsory duty towards the client and at times have very little information about the company.

As a result, this fosters a creative work environment, with a plethora of different, albeit creative views emerging from multiple designers.

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The Lego Company, for example, has a dedicated website built for fans to pitch in their own product ideas. Other users can then vote for their favourite concepts, stating how much they would pay for it and explaining why they like it so much.

If more than 10,000 people support a particular idea, it goes to the official Lego review board, where the team members then decide whether or not to add it to production. The creations that were only recently debated on include the boat and shark from Jaws, a red squirrel and a replica of Batman’s Wayne Manor.

1. Eliminating overheads

Some brands prefer to have graphic designers on board to closely control and inspect the creative side of the business. However, this can be quite costly with payroll, taxes, employee benefits, salaries, etc. to take care of. Additionally, in-house designers cannot be utilized fully during down times. Crowdsourcing, therefore, provides a wide range of services including banner ads, one-off illustrations, email campaigns, and pay-as-you-go pricing models.

1. Creating a buzz

Another great method for leveraging crowdsource is to double down. Since some platforms allow users to run surveys and voting through social media accounts, you can easily reach out to fans and your network to vote on designs. Not only does this successfully provide valuable feedback, it also helps create substantial buzz as work continues to grow.

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A few years ago, Wild Creations (WC) experienced a significant change in work dynamics, with the team deciding to take the opportunity to give their six-year-old brand a reboot. They knew perfectly well how they wanted to change the image of their company, and felt they had enough experience and creativity between the managers and partners to build a new identity for the brand.

The only problem was that they became the victim of the IKEA effect, or in other words, the bias created by your own labour of love. The company had developed the logo years earlier, which always included a set of eye balls.

When they set out to rebrand, they wanted to incorporate these eyeballs into the new logo. Their project, submitted on 99designs.com, received over 300 unique submissions, and in the end, WC chose a design that did not follow their suggested guidelines, with the designer’s recommendations really standing out.

1. Inexpensiveness

Michael Hyatt, in his thirty-plus years of book publishing, was involved in the design of many book covers. ‘I was always surprised at how much we paid for design. It wasn’t unusual to spend $5,000 (or more) on a book jacket,’ he says.

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This is in part because it was difficult to find and hire great designers for personal work. According to Hyatt, the experienced ones didn’t have a lot of competition, so they could demand high fees. Crowdsourcing, however, changed all that.

Through the power of social networking, online contests and the free market, costs plummeted really fast. It’s a voluntary system since no one is forced to participate. But at the same time, you can get a decent book cover design for about 400 dollars.

1. It’s social

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The development team at 99Designs has a built-in polling system. This means you can select numerous designs, eight specifically, and ask your colleagues, friends and family for their input. They can easily rate each design and leave a comment as well.

Hyatt, for example, received 2,876 votes on one of his book cover design projects. The comments, too, were greatly helpful as they made him fine-tune his designs further, including making critical changes to the subtitle. This is probably one of the closest things you can get to focus group testing before you launch.

The crowdsource host: the flipside

Like a coin, crowdsourcing also has two sides: the good and could-be-better. A freelance graphic designer or a logo design contest, for example, might help your team take the top spot, but are the participatory perks enough for designers who cannot pull through the competition? How exactly is it beneficial for the company hosting the task?

Many start-up owners believe logo design contests to be a complete waste of time. In one case, a person held a contest for a logo design, offering a $350 prize for the winner. After almost 54 entries, nothing worked. For this amount of money and time wasted, the customer could have easily worked with an agency, a professional logo creator, and ended up with a design that they really needed.

Why entrust an important process to someone who has no stake in the business; especially if you believe that the right logo can help your brand find recognition and success? Anybody can easily find an image to slap on the letterhead in Microsoft clipart, than a logo contest entrant.

Intellectual theft and copyright issues

The fact that many people have little to no understanding of graphic design only makes it simpler for Photoshop thieves and online contest site accounts to take undue advantage. What many companies don’t realise is that they are getting a substandard product. When the business begins to lag, they will never consider that their brand is to be blamed, a service or product that is mostly represented by their logo. And sometimes, they might also get into copyright infringement issues.

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Shown above is a logo contest entry that heavily borrows from other similar logo designs. And this is just one of hundreds, if not thousands, of the ‘borrowed logos’ examples. Logo design contests seem to be set up to create these situations, despite the fact that the problem of intellectual theft and plagiarism is often discussed in the graphic design world.

You may or may not get the best work

When it comes to crowdsourcing, the saying ‘you get what you pay for’ certainly applies. Upon partnering with experienced logo designers, you can be certain that these trained professionals that will make your design their top priority. However, with crowdsourcing, your design will only be finished if they have time for it.

According to a research, only 15 per cent of crowd workers use this system as their primary source of income, and more than two-thirds say they only do it as an extracurricular activity or to earn ‘extra cash on the side’. Your company logo is surely worth more than that.

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Moreover, there is always a chance of you being offered second hand work. Logo designers that lose out on former projects, with time and effort invested into the bid, may become hesitant to let that go. So what do you think they do? Most of them safe-keep their old work and offer it up as ‘fresh’ ideas for the next company’s logo design, which might be your company. Again, all brands need and deserve more than just random cast offs from other design efforts.

For all its worth…

So, are crowdsourcing and design contests effective ways to get logo design work done? Maybe. In terms of the number of concepts you will be pitched, there is no comparison between working with freelancers or a design agency. However, if quality and reliable output is your thing, they simply cannot match it.

Since crowdsourcing websites don’t technically pay their workers, there is no practical limit on the number of revised or original ideas you will receive. Are they all good concepts? Not at all. A majority of ideas you will come across run a higher risk of being work that’s pinched from someplace else. However, realistically speaking, there are always few pearls in the pile of oysters that is crowdsourcing.

Logo design is a crucial phase in the journey of any serious business. When Bill Bowerman and Phil Knight founded Blue Ribbon Sports in 1971, they were on a lookout for a logo which could properly define their brand. Since Phil Knight was a teacher, he heard of a student called Carolyn Davidson at the university who needed some money to attend oil painting classes. He offered to pay $2 per hour to Davidson, who accepted this offer.

She eventually came up with a logo called the ‘Swoosh’, which was reluctantly accepted by the owners. They wanted to meet production deadlines, so they believed that one day the logo will ‘grow on them’. When BRS was renamed to Nike, the Swoosh became associated with the brand and over the years it ‘grew on’ the minds of a global audience. The current worth of the Nike brand is estimated to be $26 billion. A good logo doesn’t have to cost you a fortune, especially when you have the creativity to bring it to life.

One of the most important things to consider when looking for a premium logo, is analysis. You should analyze the needs of your business and the goals you want to achieve through it. The owners of Nike wanted just a minimalistic stripe to print on their shoe line. They delivered the message to their designer who started working by carrying that thought forward. When you are clear with your design requirements, you will save a lot of money and time by working on the right ideas, rather than testing and failing at a dozen designs.

Here are some tips for the forward-thinking business owner, who wants to achieve a premium logo design at a feasible price:

Take a head start:

You will only succeed in getting a good logo for a flexible price range if you put both your mind and heart into the job. When you are looking for a logo in the market, it is natural to feel like taking a shortcut and choosing a logo which costs you well under $30. Refrain from these kinds of temptations because they can be disastrous for the impression of your business on other people’s minds.

A Few years down the road and you will lament the choice you made in a hurry, just to get a quicker solution to your logo design problems. Once your hard work pays off and the company starts building a stronger reputation, you will have to get another logo which will cost you a lot more and put you back to square one. That’s why, you need to take a head start, that means now!

Rule number one: don’t go for a clip art logo, especially if you belong to the SaaS (software as a service) sector or a consulting business. Clip art logos are usually for non-serious projects run by college kids for their courses. If you decide to take this course of action, you are already eliminating the element of uniqueness from your logo design.

Rule number two: Don’t fall for the pre-existing logo templates either, because they are just an evolved form of clip art logos. Furthermore, it will be difficult to get the correct downloading formats for each platform you require, and you will be left with a grave, and avoidable, challenge.

Hence, the only way to create a unique custom logo design is by starting from scratch. You know what you want from your logo and there is someone out there who will understand your requirements and create just what you need. Start by jotting down all your USPs and anything else which comes to mind when you think about your business. If you have a competent design team, this information will positively impact your final logo design, making it resonate more with your brand.

Color psychology matters:

The psychology of color plays an important part in the logo design process. Companies have been doing this for ages. Colors play little tricks on our brains, suppressing and evoking emotions simply by watching something. You can use the right color combination as a powerful marketing tool when finalizing design elements of your logo.

This will incorporate all the brainwork you did on your brand identity and every bit of the message you want to send to your audience. 85% of shoppers base their decision on color alone, and the proper use of color leads to an 80% increase in brand recognition. Here is a visual representation of logos and the feelings their colors emit:

Consumers place visual appearance above other factors like sound or smell. Thus, it is the easiest form of persuasion when you are a marketer. Here is a breakdown of what these colors represent:

• Brown: steadiness, historical, composed, rural. Example: Hersheys, UPS
• Pink: Fun, jolliness, flirty, cute. Victoria’s Secret,
• White: minimal, simplicity, cleanliness. Example: VANS
• Black: strong, commanding, powerful, solid. Example: ADIDAS
• Purple: Grandeur, spiritual, wise, witty. Example: Yahoo!, Hallmark
• Blue: medical, professionalism, peaceful, calm. Example: Oral-B, Facebook
• Green: nature, organic, growing, sober. Example: Tropicana, Whole Foods
• Yellow: optimism, sunny, bright. Example: Best Buy, McDonalds
• Orange: creativity, friendliness, youthfulness. Example: Fanta, Blogger
• Red: energy, boldness, order. Example: Canon, Exxon

Create a mood board:

A logo can be text-based or icon based or both. However, it is also the visual representation of a brand. You must keep in mind that this logo is probably the first thing your potential customers are going to see about your brand. Write down and brainstorm about everything you need to describe your brand with. The best way to do this brainstorming is by creating a mood board. You can attach relevant images to this mood board, complete with colors and other ideas. The Niice website is a good place to start if you want to make virtual mood boards and search for images in their vast collection.

Don’t get lost in the charm of compelling aesthetics. Stay true to the core values and services of your brand when you are designing your mood board. Inspirations are there to keep your creative juices flowing, but don’t start following a theme blindly for its aesthetic appeal. You will realize later that this brainstorming builds the foundation of a great logo. When you start the design process, the brand values you list down initially are going to come in handy. Any design work which stems from the aforementioned brainstorming will be helpful in creating a logo that is fit to symbolize your business.

Keep it simple:

Complex logos surely present a very serious feel about your brand, but they are also very difficult to make. Reproducing these logos is also difficult. It’s better (and economical) to have a simple, minimalistic logo. That’s what all the “cool” companies are doing nowadays. For inspiration, look at the logos of Shell, Home Inspection Service and Penguin.

Simple logos have been the choice of so many brands over the years. They have also been proven to be a reliable face of the brand. Thus, a simple yet striking logo offers instant recognition and audience retention.

Use online resources:

The Internet is a wonderful place if you know what you are looking for. In this case, you can get many free logo design templates online on the internet. While most people don’t create a logo themselves because they do not have the required skills, the option of designing your own logo has a cost-saving appeal.

Similarly, there are many free tutorials available online to help you in every step of your way to design a logo. If you pay close attention to these resources, you may come up with a decent design on your own.

However, this requires a lot of time and patience. If you are a busy professional who has just launched a business, chances are that you will prefer to do something more important in your hours than fiddling with Adobe Illustrator.

Hire a designer:

Graphic designing is not an easy skill to master. People go to expensive schools and pay thousands of dollars in college tuition to obtain a degree in graphic design. These people have extensive knowledge of the history and current trends in logos around the world.

So, unless you have expertise in this field, you should leave it to the pros. While hiring, you need to ask all the right questions in order to analyze the potential of the designer. You can either use the services of a trusted design company or look for a skilled freelance designer.

A company

It’s tempting to skip this investment when you start your own business. It is also tempting to get those aforementioned logo templates for as cheap as $30 and customize them as your own logos.

However, this will severely affect your brand in the eyes of your customers. They will perceive you as a non-serious entity. Chances are that a dozen other companies may have used the same logo template. A good design company will save you this trouble by pitching some unique ideas to you.

These professionals have years of experience in this field. They have a plethora of design experience under their belts. Using their services to get a logo that truly defines your brand. Pac and Copy has designed digital assets for many popular brands out there, get in touch with our brilliant design team and we will make sure you walk away with a logo that aims for the skies.

A freelancer

Freelance logo designers are also good at what they do. You can look for these freelancers on credible platforms like Upwork. They have reasonable charges for making a logo and they also offer dedicated service.

When looking for a freelance logo designer, do ask about their past experience in this field. Give them some information about the kind of logo you are looking for and what your company’s values are.

Think long-term:

It might be cumbersome to promote your business as a brand if you don’t have a logo in the first place. Your company cards, website, product packages and so many other things rely on the logo. When deciding to get a logo, you have to keep all of these things in mind. In your quest to look for that perfect logo, never think that you just have to get this over with. Think long term, because your work will be represented by the strength and beauty of your logo.

Whatever visual content will be posted online, your logo will endorse it. If you have to send out fliers, you will need a logo. There are numerous brands out there which are known solely by their logo, this is how deep a logo penetrates into the minds of people. Before you get your logo designed, get your branding efforts together and make a platform so that the logo can represent your work. Their logos define the value addition their respective brands make in society. For instance, McDonald’s “M” arches in the shape of fries, whereas the “bullseye” icon of Target not only communicates the name, but also signifies that the consumer has found what they are looking for.

Once you establish the importance of branding in your business, you will create a logo which is a fruitful investment for many years to come. Your ROI will be greater if you think long term and market your business through a solid logo design. The giants go by this principle:

“Studies of the last six recessions have demonstrated that companies which do not cut back their advertising budgets achieve greater increases in profit than companies which do cut back”
–Ogilvy on Advertising, 1983

Future of logo design:

The tips and suggestions mentioned in this article are going to help you achieve a logo design which is both cost-effective and timeless. However, you have to bear in mind that your business needs to be projected as a dynamic entity if you wish to expand globally. The companies which succeeded in this effort have acquired a face for their brand through a timeless logo. It doesn’t only build reputation, but also brings new customers to you, ones who trust your business because of its widespread recognition.

This is going to be the future of logo design – portrayal of core business principles through design to a mass audience.

Personal Branding Important?

Businesses have a distinct identity of their own and there is a lot that has been said by branding gurus and marketing experts on how businesses can develop their brand identities successfully and then sustain them for long term benefit. But personal branding is a relatively new phenomenon.

We have come to regard businesses as separate entities, free of connection to any certain person. People come and go, the business and its brand identity stay. Nike, Coca Cola, Google, all of them have been around for quite some time and the people who worked for them at the inception of these companies might have left by now, but these brands have retained their original identities.

A single person, being his brand and business, all by himself, is becoming increasingly possible nowadays. Things like the Sharing Economy and the rise of the “Freelance Worker”, has allowed individuals to be free of jobs and be businesses onto themselves. But do they need branding?

Yes, they certainly do, even more, important than businesses, because they need to make themselves known to their target markets in a certain way and without the right personal branding, this might not be possible.

For e.g. there is a freelance photographer with some great skills, but just sending over a portfolio if too dull an idea to woo many customers. Anyone can send in their portfolios, how do you stand apart from them? The answer is, “Personal Branding” in the right way.

Having your own logo, printed stationery, business cards, dedicated social media channels and profiles and a great website to go with all of this, would work wonders for anyone who plans to do it all alone and not involve anyone else.

Personal Branding gives you the same persona as a business. Having your own “Brand” allows you to develop authenticity and trust, along with transparency, vital ingredients for eventual success by gaining more and more consumers on your side.

Where to Start Your Journey as a Personal Brand?

There is not a big difference between developing a Cult of Personality and developing your own Personal Brand. You need to represent yourself around a certain vision and have everything revolve around that. But where do you start the transformation from?

The answer is: Logos!

Logos are the visual representations of your brand’s vision and they serve in a big way into developing a certain positioning of your personal brand into the minds of your target audience.

While everything else like a personal website or business cards is necessary towards a personal brand as well, but a logo is where it will all need to start.

What will differentiate your website and give it its unique identity? What design template will your business cards follow?

Logos serve as the sheet anchor of all other branding collaterals that are to follow. Even as a personal brand, you need to have a certain image representing you because putting your face on everything wouldn’t cut it and would end up making you look gaudy and bad. Even on the design part, your face is not medium neutral and it might be possible to upload a great picture of yourself on your website but it’s not such a good idea when it comes to other branding materials like business cards or even promo products.

But what kind of a logo is good for personal branding?

It’s good for a business to have a certain graphic image as their logo like for e.g. Snapchat’s Ghost based logo (which represents the ephemerality of the posts you put up on the platform) or Apple’s apple based logo with a bite taken off of it, but when it comes to personal branding logos, you would end up committing a big brand sin by choosing to design a graphic based image as your logo.

Why is this not such a good idea? Because you will lose out your own personal uniqueness and image in the glare of that graphic based image as your logo. You need to promote your individual self powerfully and anything related to your personal branding has to have a certain element of your personality.

The best and most suitable designed logo for your personal branding would be a TypeFace or a Word Based Logo, using your name or your initials. The power of this idea lies in the fact that your name needs promotion and what better way to do it then transform it into a logo that you can use for personal branding. It’s still a logo that you can use and your name is being at the center of all the limelight. Typeface based logos are one of the most successful logos in the personal branding sphere

Oprah Winfrey has amassed a Multi-Billion Dollar Personal Brand and she uses her own name in the logos to promote anything done under her personal brand. People know Oprah and she leverages her name to get these very people to make her even more successful.

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Lewis Howes, an immensely successful self-styled lifestyle entrepreneur, knows how to leverage the power of his own name by converting it into a logo based brand onto itself.

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Other Popular Personally Branded Celebrities from the outrageously popular Singer/Artist Lady Gaga to the basketball superstar LeBron James has used their name for logos with spectacular success and now those very name based typographical logos are worth hundreds of millions of dollars alone.

Logos are immensely crucial for any business out there but don’t underestimate their power in the personal branding sphere. They can carve out a certain niche for you and make you look at a whole new level.

So the first cornerstone towards achieving success in the personal branding sphere is to combine your name with a well-designed, type face based logo to give you the necessary oomph and personality to develop yourself into a charismatic brand and emulate the successes of these personal branding icons.

We have brands and ads all around us but regardless of how many there are, only a few have brand power, even fewer enjoy the iconic brand status. A handful of brands can be recognized globally and have become integrated into the pop culture. All of these brands can be recognized through their logos and brand colors. So how was it that these brands achieved their iconic status and is it possible for emerging brands to obtain the same illustrious position?

All marketers would love to be in the same standing as these brands but it’s highly unlikely that new brands will ever come close to it. To get to that level of recognition, these brands have had to consistently deliver to their market over many decades which is how they have garnered so much loyalty. Even though it will take newer brands some time to become iconic, there are pointers that they can take from the big shots in the market.

Can be spotted with just the logo

A swoosh anywhere will instantly remind you of Nike, the same way McDonald’s gold arches can be recognized from a mile away. The visual cues that have been associated with these brands is what makes them so identifiable so easily. These simplistic but impactful visual cues is what gives many of these iconic brands an advantage over others. There are other sporting goods’ brands who are also successful but none of their logos will have the same recognition that Nike’s swoosh has.

Brands that are considered iconic have a top-of-mind awareness which is why having a simple and easily identifiable logo is such an advantage. Brands that have top-of-awareness are more likely to be considered for purchase as opposed to those that aren’t as familiar.

It should be noted that a customer’s buying behavior is affected by visual cues but there are other factors that are also involved such as the functional benefits and the emotions induced by the brand.

Cultural impact

Iconic brands become part of a culture which is why their branding requires them to stay up-to-date with popular culture and reflect the happenings of society.
In the book, How Brands Become Icons, Professor Douglas Holt of Oxford University narrows down 3 principles that make brands iconic.

• Iconic brands react to what is going on in the society

PepsiCo attempted to do this recently with its advert representing the Black Lives Matter movement but failed to do so miserably when people decided that the ad was insensitive and tone-deaf.
Iconic brands are known to respond to current events to maintain relevancy and to exceed beyond their functional benefits. These type of marketing efforts is what lets people make positive associations with the brand

• Iconic brands have personality

Iconic brands have personality traits just like humans. These traits are reflected in the types of products they sell, the type of celebrities they sign as endorsers, the events they sponsor and the brand’s symbols. Marlborough, for the longest time, was represented by a macho man from the Western frontier. Old Spice, on the other hand, opted for a different approach and became known for its unconventional, humorous ads.

• Personality becomes more important than functional benefits

With time, the brands no longer just represent the functional benefits, they embody the characteristics that have become associated with time. Volvo is known primarily for its safety and Rolex reflects luxury and success.
New brands will have to create marketing campaigns that depict certain personality traits that distinguish them from others and make them more identifiable.

Since the advent of conventional businesses, Logos have been there. Just like a human body has to have a face otherwise it looks odd, a business without a logo had always seemed incomplete. Irrespective of the size or scale of the business, the business had to have a logo, even if it meant to place the name of the business on a signboard outside. Logos were visual representations of a brand’s actual existence. They brought a brand to life and were an integral part of a firm’s brand identity,

But fast forward to 2017, things in the business world have changed rapidly and this transformation has brought numerous disruptions within the industry, especially in the sphere of branding and logos. Logos mean much more now than just branding collaterals as people have now developed an even deeper, more intricate relationship with them.

The world has moved on to the online realm and now people prefer to use their smartphones as the premier way of communicating with the world, even with businesses. And on these very smartphones, a brand’s logo is the now the brand itself.

Take out your smartphone right now and you’ll notice hundreds of symbols that your window to the services you need. From Twitter to Facebook to Snapchat to even Amazon, their logos are what you need to first dab on, if you want to go any further into using the services that these businesses offer. In the 21^st century world, every single customer who needs to use a certain service on a smartphone cannot bypass seeing or interacting a logo.

These actual physical interactions with the brand’s logos by audiences have raised the stakes for logos higher than they have been in history and the importance continues to grow exponentially.

Conventional branding strategies used to treat logos as something that they needed to have for the purpose of making the audience look at them as a visual personification or a face of the brand and for that purpose logos used to be placed everywhere from company notepads to billboards and even on promo products, but things stand completely changed now.

Let’s explain the “Immense power” of this phenomenon further:

When a logo didn’t have a certain degree of physical interactions involved, their effect on the user was far less. The logos of today, which you can click, dap, tap and pinch on, amplify the usefulness that a user finds in that logo being there.

There is a difference between Facebook’s logo being placed on a billboard, which you can just look at and Facebook’s logo that you can actually tap and enter into Facebook itself.

The unprecedented number of users that online businesses have amassed in recent years and the mind-boggling financial valuations that they have amassed, have been contributed in large part to the power of these logos being part of the user’s overall experience in a certain interaction with that very business, and that’s where the importance of having a good quality and tastefully designed logo has increased.

With consumers carrying hundreds of brand icons within their pockets each day, businesses and marketers need to ponder over the power that a good quality logo now begets.

These new, interactive, Logos make sure that there is a certain “Face” for the brand that could pop up in the consumer’s mind when a brand is mentioned or they could be reminded of the brand after seeing a logo, all for one purpose, i.e. to get the consumer to click on the logo to enter the business. Logos have become essential for 21^st-century businesses as they are now intertwined with them. A bad logo would never see your app is downloaded from the app store, no matter how great your services are. If you want success for your business, you now need a great logo that people love, so that it can become synonymous with the business you do and bring in customers.

Snapchat’s logo is Snapchat itself. It’s how Snapchat users remember Snapchat and the best part is that this phenomenon is also quite infectious and sticky. As your brand becomes famous through your logo, more and more people start recognizing it, which leads to greater number of consumers coming in each day.

And this logo phenomenon now transcends firms who solely exist online. Even the businesses that exist just physically need to look out for grabbing more consumers through the vast outreaching power of the online world by having unique brand identifiers like a great logo, and if they don’t do so, don’t expect to see them around in the next couple of years.

To achieve success in the current, highly volatile business environment, you need to be aware of the latest trends and mindsets that prevail within the population that you intend to target, just like how logos stand transformed and now mean so much more to business and consumers, and then apply your own unique approaches to successfully utilize these very trends and mindsets to the eventual success of your business.

Nearly every brand in the world has the same purpose i.e. of increasing brand recognition and recall and every other marketing and branding tool was geared to specifically works as a means to an end towards that very purpose, but, in this fast-paced world, nothing is static, not even this age-old branding purpose kit.

The internet took the world by storm but Google came forward like Noah’s flood, encapsulating everything in its path. The iconic search box became the place where we went whenever we wanted to know about anything. Everything became “Googleable” and a search frenzy started. Marketers saw an opportunity in this mind blowing phenomenon and this gave birth to the SEO era. Optimizing your brand for keywords and putting and pulling as many reference links to your side as possible was seen as the top priority for brands across every industry, but all of that is in for a very big change as we move ahead into the new era of Search Revolution, powered by Google.

Google Lens, a pioneering technology, has been launched as a feature of Google Assistant for Android and iOS phones, and this very technology will be the heartbeat of the next big revolution in Search.

Just imagine that if you could install Google directly on to your own retinas and whatever you see, you could get any type of information on it, but that’s not just imagination, that’s actually happened with Google Lens. This new feature will allow you to point your smartphone’s camera at anything and Voila! Google comes up with the answers. Point your phone at the restaurant in front of you and Google instantaneously comes up with the reviews, point it at an animal and Google will return with much more information regarding the creature than you’ll ever need. That’s Google Lens for you, an extension of your own human instinct, carried on forward from your childhood. Remember the time when you were young and you used to ask “What’s that?” and a reply came, Google lens will work on the same lines, but this time you’ll be surer of the answers you get.

But will this new innovation bring a drastic turnaround in the field of branding? Yes, it certainly will, but nowhere will it be as important as in the domain of logos.

Logos define your business and portray your brand’s image and vision to the onlooker, but that conventional purpose for a logo will undergo a big upheaval with the introduction of technologies like Google Lens. Yes, Google Lens allows you to get information on something by just pointing your smartphone’s camera at it, but what will make you ponder your camera to that specific point or in simpler terms, how to get the user to search more about the brand? The answer is, through your Logos.

Logos used to have a lesser role in the branding domain as compared to its peers but from now onwards, it’s your logo that will make people know more about your brand and the importance of getting a good enough logo for your brand will acquire a new meaning.

A brilliant logo will make people want to know more about it and their smartphones will help them in a blink with this task, but mediocre logos will definitely be ignored. Brands with badly designed logos and with this that are not that aesthetically pleasing, will definitely miss a major chunk of interest that could have come their way, had they had a better logo.

This might sound quite a far-fetched scenario or to seem it might not even seem plausible, but technology has a funny way of surprising us. Who would have that the world will go gaga over an app, that automatically deletes your pictures and videos after 24 hours aka Snapchat? Was there anyone who could have predicted that of all products and industries in the world, an internet search engine would become the most valuable firm in the world? Xerox didn’t see the rise of the printers and lost out, while Kodak met the same fate when it too became delusional and didn’t think much of the imminent smartphone revolution in its tow. Preparing won’t leave you worse but not doing enough has the chances of making your brand’s ship sink and never re-emerge again. Getting a new logo for your brand might sound like something inconsequential for this type of a reason, but for the foresight, anyone thinking on these lines will stand a significantly less chance of growing forward in the upcoming era.

Firms often spend a huge amount of time and financial resources on getting their branding strategies right, to serve just one purpose and that is to initiate and sustain consumer interest. But the world has been changing drastically for the past couple of years. Smartphones and social media have infiltrated our lives as we look forward towards a future that might feature driverless cars and robots that could learn to think and act on their own. What worked two decades or even five years ago, just doesn’t make the cut now. Old strategies need to be replaced with newer ones that are more in line with the world we inhabit today.

One of the most significant places, where we can see this change in attitudes is the domain of branding. The Millennial Generation doesn’t like conventional forms of branding, as signified by a recent research by Goldman Sachs. In the research it has been found that Millennials would buy clothes without the brand’s logo more easily. And that’s not it, these Millennials would rather spend their money on vacations and food than go to pay an extra premium for a certain brand’s name, according to Morgan Stanley.

For brands, this is a very complex scenario, because they are now in constant danger of suffering a logo burnout, which means that their target markets would stop buying their product if the logo of the brand is aggressively used. Nowadays, brands just cannot put their logos everywhere as Louis Vuitton found out after its trademark handbags, which featured the brand’s logo went unpopular. To avoid facing a similar logo burnout for your brand, make sure you are taking the following steps under consideration:

Logos are now to be restrictively used as branding propositions:

If we say, that the Millennials don’t like their clothes infiltrated with logos and how they won’t pay a premium for a brand’s name, that doesn’t mean that logos are any less important. They still are of high value in establishing your brand’s identity and help your target market understand your vision. But, having said that, logos should now be used restrictively and not everywhere. Your brand is not to be overexposed by placing your logo everywhere like on promo products, your own products etc.

You need to make sure that your logo stays true to the concept of exclusivity and is only used whenever a brand mention is necessary. Even if you are going to file your logo on a product, make sure that it’s not too prominent and the person who is wearing or using it, is looking like a human billboard. Being simple, yet elegant is the name of the game.

Minimalism:

Millennials simply don’t like confusing stuff with too much fluff and details. Keeping things simple and minimal is what attracts the attention of Millennials today. Many brands understood that and they adopted their logos to fit the bill of minimalistic design in their logos. Some famous examples are the new logos of Google and Starbucks.

Google’s Logo

Starbuck’s Logo

Even newer firms like Snapchat and Google’s own self-driving car unit named Waymo, have very simplistic logos that are instantly recognizable. With single color schemes mashed with gradients, these logos have become hugely popular.

(Autonomous Car with Waymo’s Logo)

Designing for the Platform:

In old days, logos were supposed to just pictorial representations of the brand with no practical purpose, other than helping the brand to get its name recognized. Now things have progressed beyond that stage and people are interacting with logos in real time. Apps on Mobiles have an icon, which most of the time is the logo itself and the user has to click on it to go through to the app.

The mobile screen’s real estate is quite restrictive and the icon appears quite small, so brands need to make sure that their logos are easily recognizable and attractive enough to warrant a click by the user. Designing for the platform will allow you to leverage your logo more than you could do otherwise.

As more and more businesses transcend from brick and mortar to the digital space, we will witness a surge in how logos will be used in a more integrated manner and play their part in augmenting the user experience.

Logos have always been at the heart of our initial branding endeavors and they hold a special significance when it comes to providing a certain unique identity to a brand, but as time changes, we need to make sure that even if our love for logos has not changed, the way we use them, matches how consumers perceive them to help in delivering the purpose of generating as much brand engagement as possible with an effective impact.

Logos are definitely a brand’s first engagement asset and they serve to personify the value, mission and the vision of the brand to the consumer. There has been a lot of talk on the importance of having a good logo designed, the types of colors that can or cannot be used, how to choose a good logo designer and more, but knowing how to leverage your logo to get maximum engagement is as important as having a logo itself in the first place.

Most brands focus entirely on getting their logos made, but the placement is where the logo will reveal its real magic and bring back intensive brand engagement, only if done right. Logos need not be placed aimlessly, anywhere you want them to be, rather, they need to be placed strategically on items that will definitely bring in a lot of cohesive brand engagement. The basic requirement for choosing these carriers or points of interaction is that they need to have maximum chances of exposure with potential consumers and can initiate the stickiness factor. Here are some great items on which you can start out to promote your new logo and garner maximum consumer attention:

Business/Meeting Cards:

Our human eye is just capable of focusing on a very small area due to the conglomeration of receptors in the middle of the retina. This small area is called the fovea. You can have someone’s attention but engagement only begins when the fovea starts moving and nowhere better to make this happen than business cards. When business cards are exchanged and the person you gave it to, gives it a fleeting glance, a logo, with its intricate and colorful design will definitely stand out amongst all the textual information that accompanies it. The fovea stops here and this ensures that the onlooker does hover at least for five to ten seconds on it, which is enough time to create a sense of familiarity.

Promo Items:

The appeal of promo items is timeless and now, with the introduction of even better and more comprehensive array of promo products, there is no dearth of options for brands to choose a suitable platform to promote their business and the best way to do that is by placing your logo on the promo item.

Options like company shirts, pens, mugs, USB pen drives, power banks and much more are available as promo items on which you can place your logo. The main USP of promo items are their usefulness to the receiver and whenever they use your promo item, they are sure to view your logo. No other platform can give you such endearing, multiple views of your logo like promo items. The allure of promo items is great and no one likes to refuse a free, utility item. You can even mass order them and send them out to potential customers or even cover a full range of company’s employee base, allowing you to reach out to a massive audience on a very small financial budget and attain maximum brand visibility.

Social Media:

One of the most important engagement platforms out there, social media has billions of people which translate into billions of engagement opportunities and immense exposure if optimized in the perfect way.

There are a lot of ways to initiate engagement on social due like sharing posts, videos and now you can even go for the ultra-successful “Stories” option on platforms like Snapchat, Instagram & WhatsApp. Your logo placed in between theses engagement hooks, will definitely make the quality of this engagement better and make sure that the visitor on your social media handles, gets to know your brand more. You can even make your logos part of the whole experience, instead of just using them in their pictorial restraint, by using them as a CTA to redirect users to your website from social media.

Logos need not just be there because every brand has them and you don’t need to just place them in a conventional way on the board outside your office, on the top of your office memos or in your email’s signature, just because everyone’s doing exactly the same thing with their logos. It’s important that you ensure that your logo is being pushed as your high priority marketing collateral and is a core part of your branding strategy at each stage, but if your logo isn’t working too great in these capacities, make sure that you go for a logo revamp or a get a new logo made for your brand to continue reaping the maximum engagement benefits that your logo can provide.

To design an amazing logo, there are a few skills which are absolutely necessary, these are: design abilities, creative thinking, and expert application. Whereas new designers with ability can create and deliver usable designs, it takes time to fully master the craft.

Logo design is an important part of taking care of a company’s branding yet it’s not an isolated element but an aspect that must go with all other design materials. These design materials today range from designing a brand’s office supplies to their aesthetics on social media, yet the brand mark or the logo rests as the focal point of most branding efforts. Thus making sure that your logo is impeccable remains of utmost importance. These 5 expert tips insightfully present the case points necessary to master a logo design.

1) Know the competition
Before you start designing anything it’s vital that you conduct a thorough research of your target market. Ask your clients about their competition before you get started and then take it forward from there. Compare the logos that their competitors have and their value in the market. This practice will help you understand the branding styles that are popular in the target market. That information can be very useful in figuring out what kind of visual associations are considered reliable and relatable by the people. However, don’t forget the most recognizable logos in the world are ones which don’t fit in the trends and appear out of the box.

2) Strategize with the right questions
A branding project starts off with asking questions, the answers to which lead a team to then deploy the right strategy. It’s important to implore deeply into these six important queries which Michael Johnson points out in his book “Branding-In Five and a Half Steps”.  These are; what’s the reason that we are here? What do we do and how? How are we different? For whom are we here? What is of most value to us? What is our persona?

3) A flexible process
Formulating a strategy does not mean that it’s written in stone. Instead, it’s a back and forth process because there will be many ideas which seem great in theory but are not suitable to carry out in practice. Similarly, there can be design aspects and visual solutions that happen in the design phase that can help evolve and fine tune the strategy.

4) Revere the client’s heritage
Whether your client wants to upgrade their existing branding for a more modern look or they want to entirely revamp their identity, as a designer your job is to be aware of their heritage and conceptualize according to it. A client’s previous logo may have illustrated their heritage smoothly in which case the potential of that design should not be rejected. Designers should keep their ego aside and not directly dismiss the evolution of their client’s identity.

5) A logo is just one ingredient
Today, it’s very important for designers to remember that a logo isn’t necessarily the first point of contact that a customer has with a brand and neither it’s the most visible aspect of the identity always. Thanks to social media, people now interact with a variety of contact points. This is extremely significant to remember as you must design a logo that can harmoniously interact with other elements of the identity experience, like the voice tone and packaging.

These principles command that a logo must be flexible and versatile without being so trendy that it goes out of style fast. The best logo should advertise the heritage, identity, and voice of the brand while following a practically applicable strategy. Lastly, it should uplift the brand image higher especially against competitors while also agreeably going with all the other design elements that a brand would need.