Branding 101

What is a Brand? 

Let me begin to answer this question with another question: What is a name? What is your name? A name is a word with a written and spoken form that is attached to an object to identify it. A name is a sound, but more importantly, it's an identity. A name is what the name represents. Likewise, a brand which consists of symbols, color schemes, catchy slogans, and a promise of a unique point of difference, is a business's identity. A brand is more than just colors and slogans, it's a reputation. If I mention the name Ghandi, people don't think of the word, they think of the man it represents, and ALL of the attributes they have associated with the man through his actions. When a consumer sees a popular logo, they don't just see a fancy symbol, they see their interactions with the company that symbol represents.

Why You Need a Brand:

Without a brand, the consumer doesn't know who you are, or why they should do business with you. 

Branding is a two sided method of setting yourself apart from the crowd.. The first side is the name. Everyone needs a name. If every burger franchise were named McDonalds, how would we know which one sold Big Mac's and which one sold Whoppers? The second side is the entity the name describes and more importantly, the reputation it has earned for itself. If Burger King and McDonalds both had the same menu, why would it matter which one we go to? A good brand emphasizes what makes a company unique and tells the consumer why they should choose one business over the competition.

Aspects of a Strong Brand

•  Logo (symbol)
• A logo is an emblem that represents a business. There are many aspects that effect the quality of a good logo. (see my blog: "The 7 Pillars of Good Logo Design")
• Color Scheme
• A color scheme (in reference to branding) is a set of colors that represent your brand. Your color scheme should be incorporated into your logo, your website, your physical store, your employee's uniforms, your business cards, your dvd's, and everything else that you ever do. Your color scheme should also be researched and chosen carefully to best suit your psychological and emotional message.
• Unique Point of Difference
• This is your promise. Ultimately, every aspect of your brand is to build and reinforce this one idea: Why the consumer should choose you. Your unique point of difference should be what you do differently than everyone else to make your product better. This aspect of your brand is built best with actions, not words. Everyone can play lip service to an idea all day long, but what customers remember from their business with you, is what really matters at the end of the day.
• Slogans
• Slogans are an easy way to help identify and strengthen your unique point of difference. A Good example would be Burger King's, "Have it your way." The slogan tells the customer what the business is doing to set themselves apart. A slogan is a promise in word form. A promise that should never be broken.

Vectors and Why you need them

What is a vector? You may have already heard me or someone else say that you need to build your logos in vectors. You may have heard that vectors allow your artwork to be infinitely expandable. But like most normal people, you are having a hard time processing any of this because you are stuck on the question, "What on Earth is a vector?" Since I am at that time in my design process where I turn my sketch into a computer image, there is no better time for me to explain what a vector is, how they work, and why you need them.

Bitmaps: 

 In order to properly understand what a vector is, you'll first need a lesson on what a bitmap image is. If you know what a .bmp file is, don't let that confuse you. .bmp, stands for bitmap, but bitmap is also a broader term. .jpg, .tiff, .png, .bmp, and .tga are all examples of bitmap images. A bitmap is any image that stores it's data in the form of pixels. All photographs are bitmap images. If you zoom in really close on a photograph, you can see the individual dots of color that make up the image. Bitmaps are great, but they have limitations that make them undesirable for logo design.

Limitations:

The first limitation is expandability. For example: I have this picture of my drawing. It is a 100x100px .jpg image:


100x100 is really small. I need this to be big enough to fit on my banner that is 900x900 px (a real banner is MUCH more pixels than that but this is the web so I'm using a small example). No problem, I'll just grab my image and re-size it to the scale I need:

Oh no! I've lost all my clarity! The image is pixelated and ugly! What do I do? Well I have 2 choices, I can go back to the original version of my logo, and make modifications to it and save it as a MUCH larger sized .bmp image (if this is the method you choose, you might have to remake the original logo all over again at a larger scale). OR you can convert it to a vector image.

The second limitation of bitmap images is file size. Every pixel on an image is data that has to be stored in the file. Once an image begins to reach very large sizes it takes up a lot of space on your drive and the computer will be very slow at processing any changes you need to make to it. For the sake of expedience and file space, vectors are the better way to go.

 Vector:

 A vector image doesn't store its data in the form of pixels. It stores it's data in the form of shapes and mathematical relationships.

What you see to the right is a screenshot of the logo I am working on in Abobe Illustrator. Illustrator uses only vectors. The little white dots on the red line are "points" along the "path" (the red line) and the long red lines you see are "handles" which control how the path interpolates between the points. A vector image doesn't need to sample the image into pixels and save every dot of data. It only needs to know where the Points are on each path, how to interpolate the path between the points, and how to "fill" and "stroke" each path. This means an image that is 30,000x30,000 pixels is the same size as an image that is 100x100 pixels when the image is saved as a vector. Vector images are smaller file sizes and they are infinitely expandable without quality loss because all the computer needs to do is take the formula for the image and make it bigger.

7 Pillars of Good Logo Design

I've realized that as someone who's been billing himself as a freelance branding artist, I've been doing a terrible job of educating my clients. Like any venture a young hopeful novice embarks on, mine is already filled with lots of stumbling around in the dark like a drunk in the ally at midnight. The sad part is I have just gotten started. But now I'm getting off topic...

As I've been working on coming up with ideas for a new logo I realized that about half of the ideas I've come up with are (at least at the moment) horrible ideas for one reason or another. Some are too complicated, others don't translate well, and the list goes on. Part of the reason I've been doing this is out of a desire to give my client what they asked for. Except as an "expert" in the field, it's my job to properly teach the client what they should be asking for. When a client comes to me knowing they need a logo, I should stop them before they get too deep into telling me what they want their logo to be and educate them on what they need their logo to be. Otherwise I end up in a situation where I keep finding myself trying to paint the Sistine chapel when I should be trying to design Warhol's new Campbell's soup can.

The other part of the reason I keep falling into this time wasting trap is because I haven't effectively ingrained the principles of good logo design into my own mind. As an artist who's learned about logo design, I instinctively can spot what makes a good logo a good logo and what makes a bad logo a bad logo, but its not a list I can read off definitively. Instead its a web of ideas and principles in my brain and when looking at a logo I can instantly tell you what is bad about the design (assuming there is something bad about the design) but I can't read off a check list making sure I told you everything that is good about it. I can't remember everything that makes a good logo a good logo unless I'm looking at a logo that doesn't have a trait that it's supposed to.

To correct this problem I decided I would consult the experts of the interwebs to help me create a definitive list of things good logo design requires. Not that I need to be told how to design a logo, but I did need the help of others to make sure I didn't forget anything. It also helped to see how other people worded the same concepts because when your field is visual, sometimes putting things into words is a challenge. What follows is a list of what I am calling the pillars of logo design. I plan on bringing this list to all my future meetings with clients so I can quickly show them what a good logo needs and through the design process prove to them that I am meeting those needs. After all, if the client doesn't know what they are looking for, how are they going to judge the quality of the work at the end? I also plan on using this list as a checklist at every phase of the design process to help prevent me from wasting time in the future.

The 7 Pillars of Good Logo Design

Scalability

Logo's need to infinitely scalable. Look at the top of any web page and see the tab you have opened. What you see to the far left of the tab is a 6px by 6px logo in the form of a web icon. That's really small, and yet (if it was designed right) it still looks clear. There may also come a time when you see the very same logo on a 50ft banner and (if it was designed right) It will still look clear. Good logos need to be able to retain clarity at all sizes. It is this reason why good logos are designed in vectors. I personally use Adobe Illustrator to create my logos once I have a decent idea on paper.

Edit: Web icons are 16X16 pixels. Don't ask why I said 6X6. I couldn't tell you.

Simplicity

Simplicity could actually be considered a pillar of design in general. In good design, even things that look detailed and intricate at first can be reduced to something much simpler upon deeper inspection. All design requires a certain level of simplicity as to not overwhelm the viewer. Simplicity is of even more importance in logo design when you need something that can convey a message quickly, be recognized at any scale, and be recalled instantly by the person who viewed it.

A subcategory of simplicity is making sure the logo works well in black and white. As I was taught in school, it's always best to design in black and white first. If a design looks good in black and white, it will always look good in color. Something that looks good in color however, cannot always be translated to black and white. Businesses need their logo to fill many needs and are often times going to need to use a black and white version of their logo. Furthermore, color has a tendency to act as a mask to aspects of poor design. building in black and white first helps avoid this pitfall as well.

Memorability

What good is a logo that people can't remember? Part of building a brand is building something that people can quickly recognize. Seeing a brown UPS logo and instantly thinking of the Brown truck with the worker dressed in brown delivering a brown package to your door is an example of good branding. People see the logo and they instantly think of what it represents. Good logo design can be instantly recalled by anyone who has come into contact with the logo especially if they have a memory of what that logo represents to attach to the logo.

Timelessness

This is something people don't often think about when designing a logo or when coming up with ideas about what they want their logo to be. This seemingly unimportant detail is anything but unimportant. The last thing a business wants is for someone 10 years from now to look at their logo and say, "I don't want their outdated product." If someone can look at your logo and determine roughly what time period it was created in, you're in trouble. Logo's with a date on them eventually expire. To this end good logo design avoids trends that come and go and always looks to stay unique and different.

Originality

This one should be obvious. A good brand focuses on what sets it apart from the rest and makes it better. A good logo should be a part of this. No one wants a logo that conveys the idea that they are the same as the competition. People want choices and people are going to chose the choice that sounds the best to them. A good logo impresses the importance of choosing you.

Coherence

I've stated before that a logo doesn't have to convey a thought. If you were to look at a McDonalds logo for the first time, you wouldn't think of hamburgers. If you were to look at the Nike swoosh or the Pepsi symbol for the first time, you wouldn't think of shoes or soda either. Not until you've had the chance to connect the dots anyways. However, it might not be good advice to walk around saying that your logo shouldn't convey such a thought. Indeed, a logo that tells people what you do without you having to tell them does half the work for you and aids in the memorability of the logo. It's a really good idea to have a logo that articulates what you do in a coherent fashion. I'm still iffy about whether or not this should be considered a pillar of good logo design since it's not required, but since its a really good idea I'm leaving it for now.

Afterthought: the three examples I gave don't articulate exactly what the product is but they do still articulate an idea that helps make the connection to the product. The golden M for McDonalds makes you think of the name which makes you think of the food. The color yellow also makes you hungry. The Nike Swoosh doesn't convey the thought of shoes but it does convey the idea of motion, speed, and perpetuity, which will in turn lead you to connect those thoughts to the thoughts of their product. The Pepsi symbol doesn't make you think of soda, but red makes people thirsty, blue relaxes people, and the waves in the symbol are likely to make them think of liquid. So I'm updating my position slightly to say that a good logo should always articulate an idea that you want people to associate with your product in the event that it doesn't convey the idea of the product itself. I guess we're all really only selling ideas anyways.

Universality 

Good logo design transcends cultures. As a business grows and looks to markets, it needs it's branding to be acceptable to those markets. The ideas a logo conveys should be done in such a way that they aren't restricted by language barriers or cultural differences. It is also important that your logo be inoffensive to all cultures. What is perfectly acceptable in the US is sometimes entirely illegal in China.

As I was writing this I realized that there are other aspects of good logo design that are important, but couldn't really be described as pillars. Or at least, I haven't figure out how to fit them in next to these pillars yet. Some of these things include psychology and color theory. For now I'm happy with this list. I will expand on these other ideas later.