A logo is not your brand, but a confusing one can cost you

Every few weeks someone tells me they need a new logo because "the business feels stale." Sometimes they are right. More often, the logo is not the problem. But sometimes it really is, and it helps to know the difference.

First, what a logo cannot do. A logo cannot make people trust you. It cannot explain what you do. It cannot fix a muddled message. Customers in a town like ours decide based on whether you showed up, did the work and treated people fairly. A logo is a name tag on that reputation. Nothing more.

Now, what a logo has to do well, because a bad one quietly gets in the way.

It has to be readable small. Look at your logo as a tiny profile picture on a phone, then as a sticker on a truck door, then stamped on a receipt. If the name turns into a smudge at small sizes, it is working against you. Thin lines, tiny taglines and long names squeezed into a circle are the usual culprits.

It has to work in one color. You will need it on a black and white flyer, an embroidered shirt and a one color sign. A logo that only works in full color with a gradient is going to look wrong somewhere, and the somewhere is usually where customers see it.

It has to match the business. A logo that looks like a national chain on a family owned shop tells people something that is not true. A logo that looks homemade on a business that charges for expertise does the opposite. The look should fit who you really are and who you want to serve.

It has to be used the same way every time. This is the one I see most. A business has three versions of the logo, two shades of its color, and a different font on every flyer. Customers do not consciously notice, but the business feels less steady. Consistency does more for recognition than any redesign.

So before you spend money on a new logo, ask yourself:

• Can people read the name at a glance?

• Do I have a clean, high quality version of the file?

• Is it used the same way on my sign, my website, my invoices and my social profiles?

• Does it still look like us?

If the answer to most of those is yes, you probably need to tidy and use it consistently, not replace it. If the answer is no, and especially if you cannot find a good copy of your own logo, a fresh one is worth doing properly.

Either way, start with who you are and who you serve, then let the design follow. If you want more plain talk like this on logos and how a business looks and sounds, I send one short email every two weeks with one honest argument and one thing to try. No pitch. Join at https://www.freelancepro.org/join