Logos have designers. Brands have managers.
posted by pete on July 30th, 2009
Unspace is working on a really cool design and user experience project for a client right now. Lukas Dryja (who runs his awesome boutique design consulting company Kolor out of Unspace HQ) and I found ourselves having a very interesting conversation about logos and brands.
Jayson Zaleski at Kolor had this to contribute:
An identity requires strategic thinking. If a company is to be successful in today’s saturated market of innovators and followers, it needs to command attention. Attention is gained through delivering a consistent promise within/through quality of product/service, fulfilling audience expectations in the established relationship, and brand projection. To be memorable, all of these elements require constant policing.
However, the brand starts with the logo. It is the most universally-applied element within the brand platform. Copy writing, photography, advertising and marketing all require very targeted and consistent messaging, yet the logo is the most important of all elements.
It needs to function effectively from a technical perspective:
- Does it reduce well?
- Does it hold up on screen without loosing detail?
- Does it gain attention on a t-shirt as well as on the side of a building?
Also, it needs to communicate who you are and some aspect about what your company does. It is your business card, introducing who you are when you are not around to do it yourself. If your logo fails to communicate your distinct personality, it will fail to resonate after it is out of sight (and out of mind). It needs to hold enough conceptual might in order to provide a visual palette for the brand.
A logo doesn’t just work in the middle of a white area… it requires a larger narrative, and this narrative will provide a dynamic environment for the logo to work within.
Now, I am but a lowly programmer… but I can tell you that the brand is not “just” a logo. A brand is a personality, a character. It’s a feeling that your customers associate with it when they think about you. Brand managers spend their time planning the persona of the business, and it’s a vital part of their strategy. They think of brands as people.
Close your eyes and picture Mr. Harley Davidson walking into a bar. You and I are both thinking of the same dude. That doesn’t happen by accident!
That’s why a clever logo and a catchy domain that is available is not branding. Like every other successful online business, your brand needs a visual language and identity of its own to stand out from the crowd.
July 31st, 2009 at 09:30 AM
Nice article, but your Harley Davidson example is unique, in that the brand has a very visible niche market – anyone who’s seen a Harley has also seen a Harley rider. Anytime someone see’s the companies product, they also see the “bad ass” biker sitting on top. That biker “is” Harley Davidson, the personification of the brand.
Now, what would General Electric look like had he walked into the bar? We’d probably think of the Maytag man but that’s just by association.
I agree that there is much more to a brand than simply a logo, but I think you’ve used a pretty rare company to help strengthen your argument.
August 4th, 2009 at 03:14 PM
Hey Jimmy!
My HD example might be a good one, but it is far from unique, as evidenced by the presence of brand management teams at every product company on earth. A big part of their job is to make you forget that they are even there, remember.
The key takeaway is that a brand isn’t a logo, it’s the feeling you associate with it.
Logos are a big deal, of course: just think of the insane number of corporate logos most consumers can identify even if they can’t point to Iraq on a map.
February 26th, 2010 at 10:06 AM
I agree that there is much more to a brand than simply a logo, but I think you’ve used a pretty rare company to help strengthen your argument.