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Logo Standards from the Business Perspective
When faced with the task of explaining logo standards to clients, it seems like we have it covered.
- Don't dilute your logo
- Don't shift graphic elements
- Don't alter colors
- Don't use graphic elements as stand-alone identifiers
All very common language in the identity guides I've both read and
written. As designers we know violating the "don't" is poor practice. Surely there
are hard statistics and marketing studies out there that show how violating the "do's and don'ts" are harmful? We didn't just make it up! Problem is, I can't seem to find any!
Did I miss out on a big secret book of statics of people running away in terror from logo misuse? Sure over the long run we can pull some case studies of brand loyalty (Starbucks certainly succeeded in becoming iconic enough after 10 years that no words in there logo are necessary).
But what about small businesses, new businesses, people who just aren't design savvy? Sometimes I wish I had a spreadsheet of bottom line statistics to support my suggestions. But frankly, other than inside our own design world, I haven't seen much written FOR businesses as to why things like "make my logo bigger" are a bad
idea in the real world.
Have a missed something? What do you guys think?
Comments
I think you are correct on all accounts. There is a serious lack of quality design books that aren't just visual reference.
Case and point: I was in Borders browsing the "Graphic Design" section (which is a tiny shelf shoved in with the "Art" section by the way) and was appalled with the lack of any quality offerings. Sure they had THE BIG BOOK OF LOGOS and those annoying 1,000 different greeting cards/layouts/tags/who the hell cares any more books and that was about it. If there was any sort of informational design book it was written for freshman design majors by a professor who has never actually worked in the industry.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that it has become increasingly clear to me that if we as designers want some solid informational materials to share with one another we are just going to have to create it ourselves. Because we are the experts after all right? And of course we will make it look bad ass.
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