5 Things Your Logo is Doing Wrong and Why it’s Costing You Money

A carefully crafted logo design is essential for every thriving company as it’s often the first branding element that we see when we discover a company. Respectfully, we only get one chance to make a great first impression. In this blog post, we cover five common logo mistakes that could be limiting your business growth and costing your company money.

Your Logo is Complex

Some of the most memorable and successful brands in the world use logos that are made up of simple shapes. In addition, practically every modern rebrand that takes place results in a more simplified and minimal logo mark. This is true because logos that are too busy are difficult to remember and identify. When scaled down to a small size, complex logos begin to lose integrity and some elements might become hard to see or even disappear. By keeping your logo simple from the concept or idea of the mark to the construction of the form, it will become more visible and memorable at almost any size.

A helpful tip to ensure that your logo or icon doesn’t become too complex is to design the icon to fit within the parameters of a square. This can be a helpful practice to ensure that your logo icon displays properly in apps, profile photos, favicons, and other environments that are limited on space.

Your Logo is Not Responsive

Traditionally speaking, logos used to only appear in a handful of places such as on signage or hand-painted on vehicles. In the world that we live in today, screen sizes are becoming smaller and new outlets of advertising are constantly developing. Responsive logos can adapt in size, color, and optimize to fit different environments. (See example below)

With so many different places that your logo needs to appear, having only one version of your logo doesn’t cut it. As advertising and the way of doing business have evolved, it seems more practical to use a responsive logo than to use a logo designed for a billboard for an apple watch icon. Using only one logo is more convenient, but doesn’t lend itself well when applying it across multiple environments. Remember that when your customers can’t identify your logo and brand, you remain invisible and miss out on sales.

Not Testing Your Logo

A logo is one of the main graphic elements that represent your brand and it appears on almost all of your brand touch-points and collateral. With this being said, it should be tested in many different environments and applications to ensure that it functions well and does its job. Oftentimes, inexperienced designers fail to test logos thoroughly before calling them finished. As to be expected, mistakes can be made that can heavily impact how your brand is perceived.

Let’s look at an example. While you might see a flower and heart, the rest of the world might see something completely, completely different (shaking head in disbelief).

On a serious note though, as obvious as it may seem, a logo should undergo many tests, and pass many eyes before it’s considered a final. Have you considered what your logo looks like at different sizes, how it appears when it is pixelated, mirrored, rotated, or upside down? How about what it looks like when it appears blurry or viewed by someone with color blindness?

The cost of not testing your logo may seem minuscule, but as history has shown, it’s better to be safe than sorry.

Color Psychology

When talking about logos, color is something that needs to be carefully considered as it’s one of the first things that you notice when you see a logo. The colors that you use for your logo have a large psychological impact on how people feel about your brand. Some of the most famous brands can be recognized by their colors alone. Oftentimes we see banks and financial companies using blue colors to establish trust and familiarity, while many fast food companies use red in their logos and branding to create an attention-grabbing, energetic, and provocative response.

Before selecting brand colors, your logo should work in one color or black and white to ensure high-contrast and simplicity. Once your logo functions well, exploring color options is the next step. It’s important to assess the market that you are in being mindful of the brand colors that your competitors use. Most of the world’s top brands only use one or two colors in their logo. This enables them to create visual consistency and color recognition. Your colors or combination of them should become something that your brand can strive to “own” as your own in your respected market.

Communication vs Identification

You’ve probably seen a logo for a detail company with a car in it or a lawn care company with a lawnmower for their logo. We see these types of logos because the designer was trying to communicate “what” the business does, rather than focus on identifying “who” the company is.  Logos focused on communication often result in cramming literal representations of the business or service into the framework of the logo.

The sole purpose of a logo is identification. Your logo is the simplest form of identification for your brand and should be treated as an important business tool that will enable you to stand out among the millions of other brands that exist. When your logo is designed to identify “who” instead of “what” it becomes much easier for our brains to process, allowing customers to find you easier next time and recommend you.

It’s essential that your logo properly represents your business and attracts the intended audience. Getting your logo wrong can result in expensive reprints and timely distribution, among many other challenges. Cheap designs can end up being more expensive in the long term because of the losses that are taken with the fastest or cheapest option.

If your logo is making these mistakes it is costing your business money and holding your company back from being discovered and admired by a larger audience.

I’d love to hear your perspective on this. You can find me on Instagram (link to IG). If you are in the market for a new logo, brand identity, or are looking to hire a logo designer, please get in touch! I’d love to discuss the possibility of working together.