If you are the very proud owner of a logo or are about to have one burst into existence, this is for you. For this article, it is not really important what your logo looks like. We are just going to assume it is actually the best logo ever created.
A logo is probably one of the most important pieces of graphic design you will ever have created if not the most important. A logo is the face of your organization or interests. When you or the people you trust are not there in person to greet clients and potential clients, your logo takes over. It stands in place of a smiling or, at least, confident looking face. It’s important and it says a lot. Unfortunately, it doesn’t say everything.
As most of us know “kids say the darndest things“. One minute you can be looking into the most adorable face ever and the next you may be recoiling in shock by something they say. This is absolutely not something you would want to happen in a meeting. If you are telling the people you work with surreal or contradictory things – or even just have poor grammar, you probably are not making the right impression. Also, you probably are not going to be around long doing what it is you are trying to do. It doesn’t matter how snazzy you look, your communication is awful.
Ideally, you have everything under control when you are meeting a client personally. You won’t always be there in person, though. Someone that works with or for you may not either. Your logo is going to be the face of the business and the graphic design is going to work with your copy to be the voice. Just like an adorable kid can say something crazy, an amazing logo can not hide or make up for bad graphic design or communication.
I’ll let the AIGA Client’s Guide to Design describe this in a similar but different way.
Design is about the whole, not
the parts. If you wear your
$2,500 Armani suit with the
wrong pair of shoes, you are apt
to be remembered for the shoes
and not the suit. Inconsistency
raises doubt and doubt makes
people wary. This might not
matter much if customers didn’t
have alternatives, but customers
do. And they know it.So?
So, it isn’t enough for a company
to have a great logo if the communications
effort isn’t carried out
across the full spectrum of the
company’s interaction with its
marketplaces— from how the
telephone is answered to corporate
identity; branding; packaging;
print materials; advertising;
Internet, intranet, interactive
multimedia and web-related
communications; and environmental
graphics.
The investment you made into the logo for your business was a step in the right direction but it was not the only step needed. Your logo can be sitting over in the corner of a business card looking amazing while your contact info is in some huge, novelty, comic book font and the background is made up of something that looks like a tie-dyed shirt. The “face” looks fine but the communication is awful. This is where your identity and your brand comes in.
There are several pieces of graphic design that work together to create the overall appearance of your business to others – the Identity and/or Brand. This includes not only a logo but typeface, color palette, grid systems, photography and many more. When your communication looks bad, it is bad. When it looks good, the sky is the limit.
Don’t fall into the trap of feeling a logo is all the graphic design you needed or will ever need. It is an important part of your image but it is only one piece of many.
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