The importance of a good Brand!

Believe it or not a logo can make or break a brand. Having a recognisable logo which is associated with a premium quality brand is vital to the success of any business. The logo is the prime identifier for your business and the most successful are the most simple and memorable. But along with the logo, a sound business model must be created which defines how the consumer will view the brand itself. If the brand itself delivers in terms of core values and promises, the brand will succeed.

People generally remember visual images better than plain text alone, so a properly designed logo gives customers a thing to recall and instantaneously remember while connecting the symbol with your company. The logo has to accomplish two things. First of all it has to be unique and stand out as different from others of the same nature and secondly the logo has to have relevance to your brand. Remember that logo and brands are a package deal; it is difficult to work on one without the other. The logo is the symbol of the quality which the brand represents.

So how does one go about producing an identifiable and quality logo and brand? First of all one must remember that the logo and brand name is going to appear in all dealings with the company, whether as a letterhead, on a web page, as a signature in emails and in advertising and as such it needs to be easily adaptable to all the aforementioned media. The most effective logos are those that are simple without too much detail – think of the M in McDonalds or the very plain IBM logo. In fact this brings me to a related point, the name of the brand should be just as simple as the logo. If you think of the most recognisable brands in the world such as Apple, Microsoft, Hoover and KMart none of them have complicated, unpronounceable names and none have complex logos either.

Apple in particular has gone out of its way to protect its logo. In fact they recently sued Woolworths in Australia over Woolworths’ use of an apple on some of its products despite the fact that Woolworths does not sell computer related products nor did their offending apple have the trademark bite out of it. Was this going a bit too far? Perhaps, but it highlights the fact that to many companies, the logo provides the definition of its brand and plays a pivotal role in defining the company.

Designing a good logo is not simply a case of drawing a few lines on a piece of paper. An amateur or cheap logo can make the company look small and unpolished. The follow through from concept to brand and to logo is one of that areas where is pays to use a reliable marketing company to help develop the concept fully. Motion Visual is a marketing company which I would personally recommend as providing this type of service to both small and medium enterprises because it fully recognises the importance of developing a successful brand and logo from concept to implementation.

Once you have created a logo and brand name remember to register it as a trademark to prevent copyright infringement. Then once that has been done, use it on absolutely everything. Put it right up there next to your brand name, put it on every single item that leaves your office and on every bit of advertising. Use the same consistent colours and shapes and hopefully in time it will become as recognisable as the Golden Arches or the Coca Cola sign.

MotionVisual Portfolio : Web & Multimedia - Logos & Branding