Advice: A glimpse into the process of refreshing a logo…

The following is a real-life case study of a logo refresh – where the client is wanting to refresh their whole business focus, and starting with their main item of branding: their logo.

There’s obviously a lot of client contact even to get to this point, but this email (and this series of articles) will give you an idea of the things I consider when undertaking something so critical as a logo refresh – there’s a lot more than just ‘making it look pretty’.

I’d welcome your comments or questions – I’d be more than happy to answer them on this particular process.

The initial logo ideas…

Here’s the PDF of the initial concepts: Total Care Podiatry logo ideas (102k)

My email to Total Care Podiatry

(A quick personal salutation first!)

I’ve attached a PDF of some ideas I’ve been toying with for simplifying the Total Care logo…

Firstly, I believe it is important to simplify it – currently, there are about 5 or 6 ‘things’ to take in with the current logo: top wording, bottom wording, the evolution graphic, the circle, the feet in the circle, and the two-colours themselves…

The five traits of a ’successful’ logo are: memorable, scalable, reproducible, consistency, and relevancy.

– Memorable is simply a factor of how much you’re asking the customer to do each time – how hard it is to connect your logo to your business. The more ’striking’ the better. Often, something ’smart’ or quirky or something with that ‘ah-ha’ moment is enough to make a logo stick in your customers’ mind.

– Scalable is to ensure that the log will still work when viewed the size of a house, as well as the size of a postage stamp. Open up the PDF and zoom in or out – out especially – and see if you can still recognise some of the options when they’re really small – like when someone is approaching your clinic from half a kilometre away!

– Reproducible is a boring, yet important one – so that the logo can work in all mediums: web, print, fax, stickers, beer mats, etc… Some mediums aren’t as good as others, and you’ll lose fine details.

– Consistency: both is the way that you use it for all your branding (that’s easy), but also in the way that you can then use it for multiple purposes – can you logo be ‘reused’ as a sign on your wall, but with different writing? or as a front page heading on an annual report? Sure, you could slap your logo on anything, but a great logo lets itself be modified for other purposes, yet still retain it’s first purpose of being your ‘mark’.

– Relevancy: the tricky one, as everyone will have a different point of view. Essentially, how well does your logo tell a story on it’s own? Does it need a byline or is it strong enough to stand by itself? Don’t add in 20 other graphic devices to make your logo relevant – try to tell that story with as few ‘words’ (graphic devices) as possible…

Whew! Panadol supplied on request…

Onwards:

Your current logo is there in the top left for comparison to the following options…

First I simply reproduced the current logo, dropping the ‘feet’ in the background, and reversing out the colours – so that there was only one colour. As you can see, it’s certainly ’stronger’ than the current one already…

I grabbed one of the feet symbols, and began playing with it, and was motived by the similarity of the five toes with the five people in the evolution graphic. I tried to make it fit, but it’s not really recognisable, nor very good when viewed from afar.

I liked the cut-off foot image: it’s as strong as a ‘whole foot’, but not as big. I think most people would see that it’s a foot, even from this small piece of it… Trying some text only underneath does make a strong statement, but I think overall, the graphic is too strong for the text – and with only three words in the main line, and five in the byline, there’s no decent way to ‘phrase’ the words on multiple lines – one is always hanging over.

Then I think I stumbled across a good idea: ‘bracketing’ your wordmark (the word-only part of your logo) with two feet…

I made the big one at the bottom first, then tried making it smaller. Putting words on multiple lines didn’t work (again), so I tried all-caps on the byline. That let me make it smaller, yet still be readable.

Finally, I tried the best trick in the book: reversing it. The result? The two burgundy boxes with the white logos/wordmark in the middle… Reversing the colours gives you more visual impact – more bang for your buck – with only one colour.

My suggestion would be the reversed logo in the rectangle, but in all respects, the pillbox also works well – it would probably depend on the medium. If it was a pillbox-shaped exterior sign, than it would be AOK, but a rectangular business card would also fit well. It would also work well on a totally burgundy A4 sheet, with just the logo, small, near the base.

The ‘in joke’/'ah-ha’ moment is the fact that no-one would sensibly have their feet that far apart without some pain – not much, I know – it does invite a second glance.

Then the email signs off…

Again, here’s the PDF of the initial concepts: Total Care Podiatry logo ideas (102k)

Subscribe via RSS or via Email to keep in touch with the rest of this process…

AB out