Business logos define who you are

The Twitter Bird, as Twitter’s logo has come to be called, is a very memorable logo indeed. But none of the founders came up with it, and they certainly didn’t get it from some highly paid marketing expert nor a team of designers putting their brains together. That bird came from the users. Very soon after the site was launched in 2006, users started to refer to their messages as “tweets”. And what better to represent tweets than a bird? Twitter considered strongly how users use and consider the brand and they are much better off for it. Like billions of dollars better off for it. That’s the power of business logos. The best of them transcend the brand several times over.

Twitter’s logo reflects the spirit of the community using the brand, but it’s more than just that. It communicates the purpose of the business and the values that it seeks to espouse. The best businesses can have the worst business logos and the worst of businesses can have the best of business logos. Business logos in themselves will not ensure success. But it is instantly recognizable and relatable for a wide audience. It has to uniquely represent what the business stands for and convey that clearly. Business logos can even be crowdsourced, to add to what Twitter did; that means you hold an online design content for the logo and pick one of the user created designs to be the first iteration of your business logo. This keeps costs low and lets business owners dictate what they’ll pay for a logo. And it engages your user community. It’s a win-win situation.

Business logos don’t need to stick to typical rules when deciding the logo design. There are no rules other than the ones that you impose on yourself. But if you are hiring a designer, it is always a good idea to give him a guideline or something to work with, such as making sure the logo is capable of being reproduced in various sizes. Think of it will look on a business card and a billboard. Think of aspect ratios, which is the ratio of length to height. This should not be compromised either. Also consider the target market you had in mind; will the logo be impactful? Will it be memorable? Will it have instant appeal? And whatever you do, once you’ve settled upon it, don’t change it other than making some minor changes. Sometimes, change is not good. This is particularly true of business logos.