Summary: In today's episode, we discuss 3 Crucial Things to Consider When Creating A Business Logo 3 parts to a logo: company name slogan icon The obvious purpose of a logo is to make your brand easy to identify. Company Name: easily remembered, easily referred, and easily found. When it comes to a brand’s name, you can generally go one of two ways: a name that means something or a name that you shape to mean something. A name that means something would be Williams Construction Company, or Prudential Life Insurance. The whole business name tells you what it is and who it’s for. These kind of brand names are straightforward and obvious. The advantage: quick & easy to recognize and build up. The disadvantage: boring, easy to forget. The other kind of name is one you shape to mean something. For example, Nike, Amazon, Apple. These are words (with exception of Nike) that mean something, but through targeted marketing and product development mean something very different from what those words mean. Bottom line: credibility doesn’t come from a brand’s name. Credibility comes from performance and reputation. You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do. - Henry Ford Slogan: tell people what you do and who you do it for. Most copywriters will recommend you keep it to nine words. "Quality Is Our Recipe" - Wendy’s "I’m Lovin’ It" - McDonald’s "Like a Good Neighbor / Discount Daaable Check" - State Farm "The Ultimate Driving Machine" - BMW "Think Different" - Apple "Moving at the Speed of Business" - UPS "The Best a Man Can Get" - Gillette Icon: shows your personal STYLE; appeals to emotions and creates affinity Not all logos have icons. Some are text-based, like DKNY, FedEx. Some icons are…well, iconic. Nike’s swoosh. Apple’s apple. McDonald’s golden arches. Some depend on both, like TurboTax. Consider these regarding your icon: Does it mean something standalone, or does it need the typeface to bring it meaning? Does it look good small? If it only looks good big, it may be too complex. Does it work on backgrounds? For example, if you have white letters on a black square but want to put that on a picture, you need to have a black square on all your pictures. If you make it white, then your letters will be hard to read. Don’t use photos. They don’t reproduce well. There are two basic font types: serif (tails, curly Q’s) like Times New Roman or Garamond. Sans-serif are the streamlined typeface. Arial and Helvetica are probably the most famous sans-serif fonts. Color helps appeal to emotions: white - purity / clean / space because adds no visual weight black - luxury / power / strength yellow - happiness / optimism (think the smily face) blue - leadership / trust / loyalty purple - royalty green - nature or growth brown - earthy orange - fun, ambition red - attention / warning Listener Question: Daniel asked, "What do you do when your product costs more than the rest and people aren't as concerned with quality?" Episode Resources: Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, by Robert Cialdini Subscribe: Feedback: If you have an idea for a podcast or a question about an upcoming episode, visit mikekim.tv/question. Also, if you enjoyed the show, please rate it on iTunes and write a brief review. That would help tremendously in getting the word out!
