How to Avoid Getting a Clichéd Logo?

When a brand wants to get a logo designed for itself, the foremost priority it places on is its uniqueness, but with so many industries that feature hundreds of thousands of similar companies also wanting to do the same, avoiding clichés becomes an immensely difficult problem to overcome. The advent of the digital world has made it easier for all designers to access all sorts of images and ideas, which mean that any image you can think of, has definitely been used by others in making their own logos. This very scarcity of ideas has made designing a unique logo, one of the biggest challenges in the logo design sphere.

But as a brand, you definitely would want something that stands out and is original, so it’s important that you share your ideas with the designer and collaborate with him/her to get you closer to the kind of results you are expecting.

Here are great tips and considerations from our side that will definitely make it easier for you to do that and stay away from clichés while getting your logo designed:

Understanding Why Clichés Happen

Every logo needs to represent the industry of work and nearly every industry has an undeclared symbol to represent that it’s being represented there. Ever seen that homes are always featured in logos for the real estate industry or how food is always featured so prominently in logos from the restaurant industry? They are there because these elements are essential in making the audience recognize the industry that logo belongs to.

Now when the audience knows your industry, it has to know your area of specialization within that industry. This positioning happens in tandem with the industry specific images we have. For e.g. a police badge in a logo will definitely help you identify that this business belongs to the law enforcement or security industry, but adding a sea wave inside that badge as a design element makes it easier to understand that this firm specializes in providing coastal security. Here is the logo that will help you understand this concept:

When you get this difference through with, you need something that sets you apart from your competitors, so if everyone has the wave within the badge, no client in the world would be able to tell them apart. You would need to make your logo differentiable enough from the competition that also has similar elements within their logos which now brings into play the other design elements like vibrancy, color schemes, edge-o-graphy, typography and the mood. These design elements can help you in the unique positioning of your logo that the audience doesn’t confuse with similar firms that easily.

Coming to back to what makes clichés happen, as the design process moves forward, you have little room to wiggle away from the conventionals or have limited tools of choice to help keep your logo an original. There is a fine line between being offbeat and being clichéd and you can find yourself on the wrong side at any time if you fail to understand how less you need to depend on the resources and how much more depends on inherent creativity of your designer and your own self to make the logo more memorable and unique.

How to Avoid this Problem?

Clichéd signifies common and common stems from the ease and low focus on creativity. Sans Sherif is one of the most overused fonts just because it’s easier to read and comprehend than others, making it useful but still a clichéd design element, that is at best, avoided.

Even if you are using something conventional like a plane, in your logo for the aviation industry, make sure that there is something done to that plane that represents your uniqueness.

For e.g. something like a cowboy hat or Bullhorns in a logo signifies something that is from the good old Wild West or is related to it in some manner, in this logo made by us, we have combined these two peripheries to make the audience see a Cowboy hat placed on top of bull horns and also see a bull ready to rage forward. The hat functions both ways, as a hat and as the upper view of a bull’s face as seen from the rider’s perspective. This simple, yet effective logo will make this business stand out amongst similar competitors and still stay true to its other purposes.

So the next time you are gearing up to get either an entirely new logo for your brand or are getting a redesign done, make sure that you jazz the seemingly clichéd elements a bit by infusing creativity. No brand should end up with a run of the mill logo, but for that, you would need a unique vision, a great logo design firm who has the experience of catering to different perspectives successfully and the desire to get the best for your brand every single time.