Iconic Logo Design - What Seperates Great Logos from the Rest

Whether you like it or not, your corporate logo design is at the heart of your communication plan.  Your logo reaches out to your target market, reassures your customers in need, and reminds everyone just why they do business with you in the first place. Most would agree that your corporate identity plays an integral role in the success of your business.  But what actually makes a logo successful?  What are the differences between a great logo and an average logo?

Great logos are purposeful and elicit an emotional response. The purpose of your corporate identity is to communicate your message to your target audience.  If your company is playful and exciting, your logo better be playful and exciting.  When people look at your design, they should instantly think about their past experiences with your company.  For this reason, there is no such thing as a great brand identity that is associated with a bad company.

This does not mean that every design must include a graphic icon that explains exactly what you do.  While this might be important for some companies, it certainly is not a requirement.  Think about the National Geographic and McDonalds logos.  Both of these designs quickly evoke largely positive thoughts and feelings.  For the National Geographic design, you think about their magazine covers, beauty, wilderness, and wonder.  The McDonalds design evokes thoughts of playfulness, fun, and pastime.  Neither one of these designs is blatantly relevant to exactly what the company does, but both of these designs are extremely successful.

Iconic designs are unique and memorable. Every day, each of us comes into contact with thousands of brand identities.  Unless your design is unique, there is no way that it will be memorable. A unique logo is not necessarily abstract, bold, colorful, or new-age.  The best designs are frequently simple, yet distinctive enough to be instantly recognizable.  The shape and style of your graphic or typography should not be generic, overdone, or predictable.  Iconic designs stand out in black and white, and the outline or shape of the design is typically distinctive.  It may be difficult to define what makes something memorable.  In the case of an iconic graphic, it's easiest to simply test the design with a quick glance. If you can't swiftly recall many of the specific details of the design, it likely won't be successful.

Successful brand identity is timeless. As an integral part of your company's overall brand identity, your logo design should be timeless.  As a successful business, it's highly unlikely that you change your target market frequently.  However, your target market may change with the times, and design trends will come and go.  Ensure that your design is simple, classic, and withstands the test of time.  Resist design trends.  Unless your communication plan is to convey "new" and "exciting", frequently changing your design will make your logo less memorable and fail to invoke the desired emotional response.

Great logo designs are functional. The best iconic designs work small, work large, in color, in black and white, on a truck, and on a sign – they must be functional in all advertising mediums.  The key for functionality is simplicity in colors and shapes.  All respectable designers will deliver your design in vector and bitmap file formats.  Vector formats will allow you to scale your design without quality loss.  However, this is not enough to guarantee that your design will work well at a very small size.  Intricate illustrations, caricatures, and designs with complicated gradients or color schemes often are not recognizable when placed on a business card.  While a technology company may wish to have a new-age 3D logo with gradients on their website, it's very important that the design translate well to other mediums in order to maintain a consistent image that is unique and memorable.