Your Logo Says a Lot About Your Business

Author: Bud Bilanich [bbilanich.typepad.com/blog/]

Karen Saunders is a graphic artist who lives here in Denver. She has published a great e book called Turn Eye Appeal Into Buy Appeal.

This e-book is an easy-to-use guide for small business owners who want to design their own marketing pieces. It is well laid out and full of helpful checklists. It will help you learn and use designers tricks of the trade on your own computer.

Small business owners will fiind it helpful for things like:

• Understanding the visual elements of branding.
• Enhancing their ability to write persuasive copy.
• Using fonts, whilte space and other design elements effectively.
• Understanding color systems, file formats and scanning resolutions.
• Learning how to get files ready to print.

Karen has written an interesting piece on creating a great logo. She has given me permission to reprint it here...

Designing a Great Logo
Karen Saunders

You have given a great deal of attention to your company name and believe it speaks to who you are and what you do.

Great! Now you need to wrap a graphic image around that name to carve out a prime piece of real estate in your target customer's mind. That is exactly what a great logo can do.

Keep in mind that a powerful logo:

• has a strong, balanced image with no little extras that clutter its look;
• is distinctive and bold in design, making it easy to see at a glance;
• has graphic imagery that looks appropriate for your business;
• works well with your company name;
• is done in an easy to read font;
• communicates your business clearly; and
• looks good in black and white, as well as in color.

Hallmark's memorable crown logo is one of the reasons that Hallmark comes to mind so quickly when you need to buy a greeting card. It is simple, bold, looks good in either color or black and white, and bespeaks the quality required for something to be stamped with a hallmark, so it works well with the company name. While the image might not have communicated the nature of the business when it was first created, it certainly does now!

A distinctive tag line is key.

A tag line is a 3 to 7 word phrase that accompanies your logo. It expresses your company's most important benefits and/or what you want your customers to remember about working with you. Think of it as the words you want to linger in your target customer's mind about you and what you have to offer.

Great tag lines appear to be effortlessly created because they just seem to flow. In fact, creating and refining one takes time, just like designing a great logo. The benefits of taking the time to craft a great tag line lie with the tag line's stickiness. Great tag lines stick in your memory.

The Hallmark tag line, "When you care enough to send the very best," appeals to the human desire to be viewed as having good taste and an appreciation for luxury. If greeting cards are a commodity, then Hallmark has found a way to differentiate itself as the choice for quality.

The Hallmark company was founded by J. C. Hall, so the name Hallmark was a natural. It was also brilliant from a marketing standpoint. Hallmarks have been used for centuries as a stamp to denote quality, purity, and genuineness. Could there be a better way to attach the image of quality to a product? The tag line capitalizes on that image well with words that stick in the mind and exemplify good taste.

Creating a great logo and distinctive tag line are critical in creating a brand that provides the perfect image for your company and great ones just might be memorable enough to give your company the beach front property in the minds of your customers that leaves them thinking only of you.