Logo Strategy: Measure Twice, Cut Once.
Your logo should be a graphic representation of who you are as an organisation. It is an image that should help customers associate certain characteristics, values and attitudes with your business. For some companies, they have identified the importance of a logo in their overall business success. Just think about some of the biggest brands you know, more often than not you will be able to remember their logos.
For many businesses, having a logo is simply something that needs to be done but, they do not understand the significance a quality logo can have on day-to-day business. This lack of understanding will mean you spend the least amount as possible on your logo design. You may even consider using a template logo to save on costs.
The true cost of template logos
In this day and age, businesses have a huge number of possible template logo designs to select for their business if they choose to do so. There are many risks involved in using template logos. The initial price may be attractive, but the overall costs can be significant. When purchasing a logo design from an online template, there is always the risk that a direct competitor of your company may select the same logo as well. They could even purchase it to use for deceptive purposes, leaving you helpless when it comes to protecting your identity. You will not have a distinctive identity for your business and run the risk of being associated with others using the same design.
Using template logos are likely to have a detrimental effect on your business in the long run. For example, say you have chosen a template logo to represent your company then your competitor or some other nearby company buys the same design. You now run the risk of being confused with someone else. Even if you are lucky and this does not happen, it is likely you won’t give your logo and brand the attention it deserves. You may just have selected a logo you were attracted to as opposed to what will work best for your business. This means your company will come to a point when it realises the logo itself does not effectively represent the overall brand.
If you need to redesign your logo, it can be an extremely expensive process. Just think about all the places your logo will be positioned. You will need to reprint new stationery and other promotional items, update your website and signs and your ads in the paper. The list goes on and on.
The best way of developing a business logo is to start out on the right foundations, including what colours, fonts and shapes will best represent your business. Our Psychographic Profile is a terrific way to identify these aspects of your brand and develop a strategy moving forward. From there, we believe it is extremely beneficial to select and work with a graphic designer, who can develop a distinctive logo that represents your overall brand successfully. We would love you to select us as your graphic design provider. However, if you do not, make sure you sit down together with your designer and tell them what the planned logo should represent. Your logo should symbolise, in a distinct way, what your business is all about and what it stands for. As the business owner or representative, try to relate your ideas about your business to the logo designer. This places them in the best position to come up with an appropriate logo design. You will avoid having to go through the costly process of redoing an unsatisfactory logo if you do this in the initial stages of the business. When it comes to your brand, it actually is a matter of measuring twice and cutting once. Unfortunately, when it comes to logo design, our experience tells us business owners are more likely to measure once and cut twice.
