We love logo design and apparently it loves us back. But every logo design project presents challenges you shouldn’t make light of.

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This is the fourth article in a series describing Sublimio’s approach to branding projects. In case you haven’t read the previous one about the brand naming phase, you can find it here.
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Everyone talks about logo design. Logo this, logo that. Ready-made logos, logos designed by an AI, do we even need a logo, logos are dead.

And yet, after brand naming, logo design is one of the most sensitive moments of our branding process at Sublimio. We don’t take logos lightly. There is a fine difference between a brand name and a logo: while – with enough focus and persistence – you can build meaning into a name that on paper is non optimal (hello Apple, we love you!), that’s much harder to do with a logo.

That’s because logos carry more significant elements that can influence a first judgement of the brand: color, typography, shapes.

But don’t worry: doing the right thing is hard, but possible.

Finding inspiration and making sense

At this point in the process, we have a pretty good understanding of what our client has in mind and where the whole project is headed. 

The overall strategy and semantic field are pretty much defined. This doesn’t make it any easier, though. Because even now there are a few directions we could take. The inspiration phase for logo design is admittedly a pretty messy one. It has to be.

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We will be sketching a lot and filling bins with crumpled paper – yes, like they do in movies – trying to balance meaning and feeling, excitement and functionality.

Our client probably has a few logos they love and see as an inspiration, but we have to make sure we don’t fall for the familiarity trap: a logo that you love at first sight might just be too predictable for its own good.

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Name and logo design: a (troubled) love affair

Logo design doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It comes right after the brand naming, and has to dance with it.

Which is usually a matter of balance and sensitivity, not unlike dosing ingredients in the kitchen. As the brand name is already carrying some meaning – whether through rational, understandable concept or a fuzzier mood – the logo designer has two options.

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The first one is to double down, working in the same direction as the name does.

Some can see this as too obvious, but it all depends on your audience and context of fruition. If you are speaking to a distracted audience, you might want to make very clear what your brand is all about.

A fashion brand name that sounds like fashion and looks like fashion is pretty hard to miss, even though one could consider it less exciting.

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The second option is to work in contrast, go the opposite direction of the name.

Sometimes the name is already divergent from the brand field (imagine a parfume with a tough name). In this case the job of the logo designer is to reestablish that element that is missing by being more “classic”.

If, on the other hand, the brand name is very strightforward, logo design can be a nice way to give it an unexpected twist. Imagine a brand of homemade biscuits with a cozy, traditional name, and a punk-rock look. Sometimes, you have to do both.

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Take the case of the logo we designed for Upstairz, a brand managing top-level real estate assets. The logo doubles down on the meaning (the stairs are visible in the symbol) but it complements the mood: while the name can feel very bold, the logo stays minimal.

Slow-brewing: never rush logo design

This is not really a part of the process – or maybe it is. The time in between. While we all work to keep the project on track, we must be wary of rushing it.

If you look around you, logo design is sometimes presented as a feat of speed and ability. Your logo ready in one day! Your logo ready in 10 minutes!

To us, it sounds like the promise of a 10-days aged whisky. Not so inviting, is it?

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‎The development of a logo is a deep process. It should take time both from the designer’s side and the client’s side, as it’s a choice that you are going to live with for quite a while. 

To be honest, this is also why we invite our clients to not be satisfied too easily. The logos will look good – we take care of that – but we encourage doubt.

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Planning for obsolescence

Logo design is an act of planning into the future. While brands do change their logos, this is not something you want to happen too often. Notable brands have suffered hard from improper changes to their logo. But you can’t always blame them for doing so: logos are naturally exposed to obsolescence. 

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There are many ways a logo can grow old. Typefaces, for example, are subject to popularity and abandonment, especially if they strive for a very recognizable look.

You could be picking a typeface that looks very relevant today but will feel old in five years, or a font that looks very distinctive today but will be picked up by everyone and their mother in the next 12 months. How do you make sure this doesn’t happen to you? 

The same goes with colors. Palettes follow trends, and very strong ones. By looking at a combination of three hues you can probably tell which decade they come from. 

Even shapes and symbols are historically determined. They are influenced both by general taste and by the available technology of the time. Symbols of the past tend to be simpler and starker than today’s digitally designed ones, that can afford to have gradients and extra-fine details.

This is a big challenge of logo design: you want the brand to feel contemporary today, but you don’t want it to feel passé in the next five years.

Good logo design should aim to feel timeless: hard to place and yet hard to forget.

Real-Life Assessment

Just like we do for brand names, we also work on logos with a tough world in mind. Not just because the market is crowded with many other logos – sometimes very pretty ones – but because the real life of a logo is much more complicated than the one it lives on a screen, inside a neatly organized pitch deck.

Logos get covered, crumpled, compressed and abused in many other ways. We are not just talking about misuse from a designer (we create brand bibles to prevent those) we talk about the real world – both digital and physical.

A strong logo should survive the impact. This is another way in which logo design means planning into the future. Where is it going to pop up? How do we make sure it can resist the inevitable entropy that devours everything?

A pretty logo is not necessarily ready for everything. When judging it, don’t stop at the facade: demand to understand its architecture.