When the economy sucks, people loose their jobs. When people loose their jobs they have to either be really aggressive and fight for a new job, or get even more creative and more aggressive and start their own companies. A lot of times companies end up not working out so well, but other times they seriously take off and sometimes they even end up becoming fortune 500 and seriously well off companies and brands that we all know and end up loving.
During this depression, cupcakes have become huge, retro marketing seems to be working like crazy and tons of small businesses and start ups are picking up everywhere. The one thing I see happening though with these start ups is common mistakes with their logos and their brands.
Now, we all know your company may not take off, but if it does, you have to remember that when your business grows, so do the needs for your business and when your company starts to grow, your needs and the needs of your brand do too.
Your company will start to advertise at tradeshows, need handouts or be able to afford gifts for Clients and Key Customers, you’ll need branded items, you have to make sure you don’t overgrow your brand and design and also make sure that you are staying true to your company’s goals and image. Sometimes this means getting a new logo designed and launching a branding campaign, or rethinking how your company is growing.
The one thing I see happening with a ton of start ups right now and over the last few years is that since these people are not Marketers and don’t know what they will have to start doing once they take off, they end up having to re brand or re design their logos. This doesn’t have to happen and you don’t have to worry about it as much if you just think about a few small things when you are first launching your company.
Here are the things to remember when creating your logo to define your company and your brand:
Printable – Make sure your logo is easy to print and can be printed longwise for pens, if it is to tall it won’t fit. It can be printed in a square for round objects like stressballs and make sure it is easy to replicate in print and enlarged for banners and large ads. Blues, Purples, etc… are very hard to print and if you don’t have a vector file of your logo and image, then guess what, you cannot enlarge it without it pixelating or getting destroyed. You should also remember to include the .com or .net or whatever url extension you have, if your logo is your url extension as well. Using your name and url in the logo for a start up is great because even though you aren’t a large brand, it helps build the brand and make it more memorable so that people can remember it when they get home after meeting you and so they go to your website to shop which decreases your man hours doing customer service work or having to spend time taking orders over the phone.
Relays the right message. If your logo and the image do not relay the right message, guess what, your brand won’t work and the shoppers subconscious mind gets confused and doesn’t put two and two together. If you have a discount shop, glamour and high fashion don’t work, sure people will say it is gorgeous or fabulous, but the reality that it will work with the purpose of your store is very slim to none. Sure some people get lucky and can have a mismatched brand, but for the most part, it just doesn’t work. You really have to be a branding expert to make a mismatched brand work for a start up company or really lucky and have it be funny.
Make sure that whoever creates it has a style sheet created for you and sends it to you. Your style sheet will tell you the fonts they used, the dimensions, the exact rgb and cmyk printing and publishing colors, etc… so that you can replicate and print it perfectly each time. Not to mention be able to place it correctly on proposals, on websites, collateral and more.
The most important thing though is to make sure that it properly matches and represents your company, your services and your products. If you make it cheap, your customers will notice, if you are doing checks, don’t use bend rectangles because it looks like cash, if you are running a bakery, use colors that make people happy and feel good or curvy shapes, if you are doing something financial, make it strong with bold and strong colors. There is a reason that some companies logos stick out and are remembered in a good way and a lot of reasons why people can never remember other stores and their brand names.
They may remember the logo, but they may not flock and return back to it. Follow those simple tips above and you’ll be a little bit closer to having a logo that not only represents your brand, but can be printed and replicated for you when your company grows.
