Logo Design

A company's logo is its identity, its face.
And what I have generally noticed is - during the the course of operations of a company, no one notices the true importance for a logo, in such a a way that the attitude says : "slap a few colors onto the name of the owner and we will have it" or the more prudent approach is "well outsource...".
Companies spend thousands on Design firms to produce a half decent logo for them and end up with some stylized Photoshop work.

What i do believe is, it is very important for the stakeholders to sit down and design a good logo for the company. Now, I'm sure the CEO and the board must be sitting down to figure out just what their logo should reflect and other such stuff.

But what i really wonder is -
Do these people really need a crazy stylized logo from a design firm?
Are they not capable enough to dream up a decent logo for about 1% the price that they pay to these high profile design firms?
Not that i have anything against these design companies - just that a person sitting the organization for a long-ish period of time would be conversant with the culture of the place and if the need be, step back and identify what they would want to project to the world through their logo.
Much better; than a consultant hired two days back.

In fact this post is inspired from a story that i just read about NBC TV spending $75,000 on a logo which was an exact replica of a logo for a local TV Channel - which; incidentally, was made at a measly cost of $75.

http://www.etiziano.com/I_love_logo_design/history_of_the_nbc_logo.html

So, does it not sound a bit stupid on a certain level. I mean, the whole logo design trip seems to have become an exercise in wasting good money to be used otherwise. A concerted effort on the part of key stakeholders may produce effective results. What is missing in this situation is the approach that key people should be adopting to design a logo for their company.

I am sure, that stakeholders have a hazy idea of the company image in the consumers mind and what they themselves would want to project. Attaching a road map to these ideas would seamlessly guide the process in the right direction - exactly what a professional design agency does - effortlessly.

Here is what i think a logo should embody and what stakeholders should look to do to make it right:

Colors: There is a range of emotions that are attached to colors. Some evoke strength, some evoke warmth and some trust. Exactly what any logo would want to project through colors. Choosing the right color to suit your logo is considered paramount to the success of a logo. A company's business and its values are best captured through the color.
Also refer:
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/01/28/color-theory-for-designers-part-1-the-meaning-of-color/

Simplicity: A complicated logo would easily confuse and confound the viewer to what the company wants to say. A simple logo that is easy to recall is much better than a highly stylized logo that is hard to decipher. A subtle hint for discerning audience is the masterstroke for any logo (read:FEDEX)

Font: A choice of wrong font style would definitely kill the vibe. the kind of font employed to spell out the name of the company lets on as to whats the business of the company. Moreover, whether the company was really serious of the logo design process to begin with.

Leave out the confetti: Drop shadows, gradients, other hoopla. Please, you really don't need these. A good, professionally thought out logo does not need crutches. Treat these as they are - Confetti.

Moving onto thinking things through for a good design, it is important to incorporate thoughts from a number of resources in the company. It would be an excellent exercise to pull all the heads of key functions of your company and put them in a GD with a strong coordinator. Topic of discussion would, of course, be the company's values - its approach towards their work, and what they would like to project. It is important to glean insights from here and put them into conceptualizing a logo. A mind map is a good tool to employ here. It throws up awesome possibilities to think in various directions.

Excellent Read:
http://www.logodesignlove.com/images/books/Logo_Design_Love_free_chapter.pdf

Putting it succinctly:

1 Message (from Company - what it stands for, what it wants to convey)
2 Theme
3 Context/Relevance (Cultural/Geographical/Historical)
4 Subtlety

Ideation

Ideation is a group process.

An idea comes from an individual - credit has to be given there. But, i prevail upon it because it is refined upon by a group that can critically think about the process and improve upon it iteratively. Thereby lending a new perspective to the raw format that the idea took shape from originally.

Thomas Edison had a 12 member team with whose help he was able to create the light bulb and go onto building it into a commercial success. Thus, that particular spark that some guy had sitting in a corner was brilliant - but it was built upon and therefore evolved into something more solid and commercial.

Thus, ideation too may not have its Eureka moments, there are more subtle changes that come to the surface to form concrete ideas.

Which brings me to the fact that brainstorming (the most flogged term in corporate circles and fast turning into favourite middle and top management level jargon) gains ultimate importance. Brainstorming helps in ideating much better than anything else. There is a rider though, ideation is a chaotic process, the more the number of people, higher is the probability that a good idea would be lost if not scribbled down somewhere.

Informal setting is the best way to bring out excellent ideas. My team was faced with a stiff deadline in one of our projects and were running way behind schedule. We had popularly earned the title of ' bottleneck' in the project. We got together all our people in a room and informally started discussing workarounds to get the work out as required. Some good ideas came to us and we decided to go ahead and implement one of them. We brought all the requisite infrastructure together and despite our modest manpower we defeated Goliath ultimately.

We were not hung up on who talks, who listens, who interjects. It was an open discussion involving all and turned out to be fruitful.

After brainstorming, though, comes the implementation. The devil is in the details. Putting down a process, a road map to the intended end result and seeing it through requires some perspiration. The tools can be perfected upon as you go along; simply because taking in all project related environmental factors together would be next to impossible. And thereby an evolving road map is a 'good to go'. This is especially true for any work with a tight deadline (lets face it, when are deadlines not tight?). IDEO's shopping trolley concept is a case in point. http://extra.shu.ac.uk/dac/ideo.pdf

So personally, ideation is not the forte of scientists and engineers, you and me thinking together could produce intelligence. It is just a matter of thinking in the correct format.

Next post - Frugal marketing