Does Your Logo Solve A Purpose?

Why do you need a logo? When I asked this question online, nearly 19% business owners replied that they just wanted it as a formality to use it as a symbol for their company. But 81% of them felt they need a logo to act as a face for their brand.

A logo (or a trademark) is not merely a device to adorn a letterhead, to stamp on a product, or to insert at the base of an advertisement. The logo is a potential illustrative feature whose value is not completely understood when used without purpose; but when used effectively, escapes from being a boring restatement of the identity of the product’s maker. When fully exploited the logo can actively stimulate interest in the product or brand.

So what purpose do you want to solve with your logo?

The first and most important role a logo plays in your company’s life is identification. They help your audience recognise, identify, and select your business before anyone else’s. At the end of the day, all the other stuff behind a logo is just white noise in comparison to this one role.

As time moves on, what is considered trendy will change. The tools we use to develop and design things will evolve and grow in new, unexpected ways. And the basics of what we consider a logo might even change.

But at the end of the day, the most important thing that logo, whatever it is, will ever do is identify you, your product, your business, or your service.

So how can you use the logo to solve your purpose?

Two of the most important ways to transform the logo into a stimulating illustrative tool are:

1. to vary the treatment of the logo itself,
2. to alter the context in which the logo is presented.

The means by which the treatment or rendering of the logo can be varied are infinite. The logo may, for example, be drawn in line, in silhouette, or in three dimensions. Furthermore, a part of the logo can be used to represent the whole. Changing the colour or texture are other obvious ways of altering its appearance.

While the utmost variation in the treatment of the logo is desirable, it must be remembered that the basic form of the logo should never change. If it does, the logo will fail to identify the product’s maker with sufficient constancy to fulfil its chief function.