Making a First Impression

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a lazy writer will start by butchering a well-known quote.  As a way of making a first impression it risks losing the reader’s interest somewhere along the path between over-used familiarity and simply being a little bit staid. (Happily, if you’re now in fact about to doze off then I’ve at least proved my point.)

That isn’t to say that an introductory quote is the sign of a bad writer.  Only that it is a fine line to tread to find something that encapsulates what you want to say in a pithy manner without being unoriginal.

A logo has to perform much the same role as a quote.  It acts as a signpost which distils what you want to say to people.  Of course, a logo’s message may be more subliminal, but it should still strive to be succinct.

Here is the logo of my own startup, Plantedd – an online marketplace for nurseries to sell plants, bulbs and seeds.  

Some people have been kind enough to say that it’s a good logo, so I’m hoping that it’ll be useful to share a few thoughts.  You can refer to it throughout the post and judge whether it ticks the boxes.  I’m not a graphic designer, so these are purely my thoughts from my own experience as a startup on what to look out for in a logo.

The experts will tell you that you shouldn’t design the logo yourself, but that’s essentially a counsel of perfection for a startup because the reality is that you probably don’t have the luxury of paying a professional to do it nor do you happen to know a friend of a friend who is a top-notch graphic designer and who works for an international agency (as one you-can-do-it-too business book recounted in their startup story).  Just try to be honest and critical of what you come up with, and show it to others who will tell you the unvarnished truth.

This is my shopping list for a good logo:

*1.  Simple *

****You’re asking a lot of your logo.  It has to appear on your website, blog, letterhead, business card, Facebook page, Twitter account, adverts, tattoos of dedicated customers (that’s you, Apple fanboys and girls) and so on.

The logo needs to work across all these different sizes and mediums, so stretch it out and squash it down to see whether you can still recognise it at a glance.  It also means that you should design your logo as a vector graphic so that it can scale up without looking pixellated.  There are free vector graphics editors out there that you can use.  I know some folk who use Inkscape, but I haven’t used it myself so I can’t say whether it’s any good or not.

Make sure that your logo works in black and white as well.  In fact, if you start by designing your logo in black and white then it should actually help you to keep the logo simple.  Simplicity ensures that it’s flexible and that your logo will, more likely, stand out better and translate well to things like branded mugs and USB sticks.

You want people to remember your logo easily and a simple logo is easier to remember.

2.  Original

This is also a good guiding principle in life… “Don’t use stock photos or artwork.”

It’s not that I’m worried about you ripping off somebody’s copyright, I just don’t want to see a lazy logo.  It’s like the clichéd quote.  Hundreds, maybe thousands, of people have already used it and it will continue to be used.  You really don’t want to see the exact same image of shaking hands or jigsaw pieces that you have chosen for your logo appearing elsewhere on things that have nothing to do with your business.  The point in having a logo is that it is instantly recognisable as you.  It defeats the purpose if you are using something generic.

That is not to say that you need to be blisteringly unique.  Take inspiration from logos that you like by all means, but do make the effort to create something of your own.

3.  Relevant

I almost didn’t put this on the list.  It’s stating the obvious to say that your logo should be relevant to your business.  The chances are that you will manage to go for something that’s suitably playful if it’s a games company, or appropriately respectable if it’s business software.  Nevertheless, it’s worth mentioning because it is vitally important, but in fact it’s so inherent in the logo that it probably happens by default.

There we go, my first guest post for RookieOven.  Do you agree?  What else is there to look for in a logo?