Blog Archive Nov 26, 2012

The price of bran... of a logo

Here is a thing: a logo is not a brand. Branding is not having a logo, a business card and a website. Do not make this popular mistake of swapping the definitions. A logotype is an asset, not a brand.

Someone has made a good comparison of a brand to a human. A brand name of a company is like a name of a human-being, with one difference, that the more unique it is the better. There are millions of Joes, Michaels and Barbaras out there – but does it mean they all look alike and feel the same? Certainly not. Every one of them differs really a lot from each other: the face (the logo), the handwriting (image elements), the clothing style (the brand guidelines), the voice (the copywriting), language and accent (multicultural adaptations). All of that and many more details make one company be different from another, one human be different from his neighbour.

But, please, remember – it is not only about a logo. Or can you explain it to yourself how a $30 logo is now $18billion in value?.. Correct – it’s not about logotype only. People tend to forget this and when asking for a logo they picture some nice things ahead forgetting, that they actually think about the first steps of branding – which is a much wider perspective.

There is nothing bad about having a quality logotype done for your business. There is nothing bad about a logotype having just a (quality) typographic solution and not the whole story told within 2 sq cm. It is just the first step of getting your identity, your brand on the market. As soon as it is out there, you should be nurturing it, just like a baby, so it matures (it takes time, of course) and gets more attractive. Keep it simple and make it stand out. Just please don’t take a logotype for the whole brand.