Are you in love with your logo? Do you look back on the excitement you felt when you finally got the final files and wish you could relive the moment you were finally able to share it with the world?
Your logo can feel like a dear old friend. You’ve been together for years now and it’s been by your side for all your successes and through all the challenges you’ve faced. So many emotions come up when you think about the possibility of ever parting ways.
Or maybe you can’t stand your logo. You spent hours looking for the perfect one on Etsy and finally just picked one so you could move on with your life. It’s just there so that you have something to slap on your website and business cards.
It doesn’t really mean anything to you and you even feel kind of embarrassed by it. You daydream about finding a new logo and make Pinterest boards so you’re ready when the day finally arrives.
Your logo is a pretty important part of your brand. It’s often responsible for making your first impression and it helps your ideal client identify you in the vast sea of small businesses.
Whether you love or hate your logo, you owe it to yourself to put all emotions aside and take an honest look at it. You owe it to your business to know whether your logo is doing its part to strengthen your brand.
Ask yourself these four questions to see whether your logo is helping or hurting your business:
- Is your logo well designed?
This isn’t about whether you personally like your logo or what your best friend thinks of it. The biggest logo-related mistake small business owners make is choosing a design based solely on their own likes.Your brand will benefit much more from a more objective take on your logo.
There are a lot of design rules about color, typography, balance, scale, and more. But it all comes down to simplicity. A well-designed logo is simple and versatile. Your logo should be just as clear and recognizable whether it’s printed huge on a billboard or rendered tiny on a web browser tab.
Your logo is going to appear in a ton of different contexts, and it should work equally well in all of them. Having a simple logo helps you make a strong impression no matter where your logo is displayed.
- Does your logo reflect your brand?
The second biggest logo-related mistake small business owners make is expecting it to do too much. We want our logo to show all our offerings, values, goals, hopes, and dreams. But your logo is just one piece of your visual identity. It’s not able or meant to communicate all the intricacies of your brand.
What you should look at instead is how your logo fits into the bigger picture. Go back to your brand values and tone boards. Does your logo flow with the visuals you chose to represent your brand? Can you use your tone words and brand values to describe your logo?
A good logo will hint at the bigger picture and work together with your fonts, colors, and images to communicate your brand. It will support the ideas you communicate in your writing, your client interactions, and all the parts that work together to form your brand.
- Does your ideal client love your logo?
At the end of the day, your logo’s job is to help you attract your ideal client and make the sales you need to keep your business thriving. The harsh truth is that it’s way more important for your ideal client to love your logo than it is for you to like it. If your ideal client doesn’t love your logo, it’s probably time to change it.
Many small business owners understandably worry about losing or upsetting clients if they change their logo. That’s a real risk, and it’s why logo redesigns should be done carefully and only when they’re really needed. Changing your logo every year just because you don’t like the old one anymore isn’t a good brand-building strategy.
If your logo isn’t attracting your ideal client, though, you have nothing to worry about. By changing it to something that resonates with the right people, you’ll only lose the clients who don’t fit into your brand’s direction. That means you’ll have more room for the clients who make your work a joy and help you feel fulfilled!
- Does your logo place you with your peers?
Your peers are the businesses you want your brand to fit in with. They’re the ones on a similar journey with similar goals and values. They’re the brands you want your ideal client to associate you with.
If you gather all their logos, chances are you’ll be able to see that they all follow a distinctive visual style. How does your logo compare? It shouldn’t be an exact copy of any other logo, but it should fit into the general style your peers have set.
Use caution when comparing your logo to your peers’. You don’t want to emulate a style that looks unprofessional, doesn’t fit your brand, or fails to resonate with your ideal client. Always be true to your own brand before doing anything to fit in with others.
Your logo isn’t your entire brand, but it does play a pretty important role in how your business is perceived. Take some time this week to step back and see what role it’s playing in your business.