How to create a logo that works

I’ve been involved in re-branding, including logo makeovers, as an in-house communications professional as well as a consultant. For many, the hardest part of re-branding is getting the logo right. People have strong feelings about logos. They pin a lot of hopes on them and believe that getting the logo right will greatly enhance their success—however that’s defined.

I work with some amazing graphic designers, so I thought I’d ask three of them a few questions about the process of logo design and what they think makes a great logo. The panel consists of Suzanne Braun from Relish Design, Bob Gair from Spark Design and Kevin Braun (no relation to Suzanne) from Element B Design Solutions.

The Questions

1. What are the elements of a good logo—Is it all about how it looks or must it achieve specific objectives?

Kevin: Simplicity and consistency are key. Simplicity ensures easy recognition and reproduction. You want people to identify your company or product as quickly as possible. The focus should be on whether it works not whether you like it. You can’t rely on personal taste (what if you have BAD taste?). Instead, you have to focus on the target market and key communication objectives.

Suzanne: A logo is more than just a graphic; it’s part of a larger marketing concept. It conveys what you want your customers to identify your product/company with. A logo should be simple, not overly elaborate or complex. It also needs to have longevity—you’ll want to retain it for a long time. The logo is about your company and not about you personally so you need to separate your personal feelings and emotions from the logo.

Bob: First, it should be recognizable. It should also be unique in some sense. The role of the logo is to graphically represent a company amongst the clutter of marketing material out there. It needs to take on the attitude of the company it portrays but not look like the competition. So if everyone is using swooping shapes in your industry, be careful to take a new direction. The important elements of a recognizable logo are: Shape, colour and content. So if your logo is a blue circle, it might not be doing what you want it to.

2. As a designer, what do you need from your client in order to create a successful logo?

Kevin: A clear objective and trust. What is the ONE thing that you want to communicate? Trying to convey too much is beyond what a logo can do and it becomes ineffective. As for trust, as designers, we are thinking about more than just creating a unique logo. We consider the overall brand and how the logo will be produced in countless ways including print and online production. It needs to work well large, small, in colour, and black and white.

Suzanne: A mission statement and the objectives of the company as well as the demographic it’s marketing to. I also want to know what the online presence will be. Looking at competitors’ logos and samples of what the clinet finds esthetically pleasing can help as well.

Bob: Involvement. The most difficult task is when a client tells me to try a few things and that they’ll know what they like when they see it. That’s like throwing darts blindfolded. The client needs to follow the designer through a discovery process where the concept for the logo can be refined. Their input is critical to creating a successful solution. It’s best to engage everyone at the outset—all the stakeholders.

3. What do you think gets clients “hung up” when it comes to creating or changing logos?

Kevin: Unrealistic expectations can be a problem. Sometimes clients want the logo to represent or say too much visually. A logo is not an advertisement. it is a simple, abstract icon to identify your company or product. Advertising and marketing convey the rest of the message. I find that smaller companies tend towards making their logos too complicated. The most successful companies and organizations in the world generally have very simple logos.

Suzanne: Business owners sometimes second guess logos and start to take the design personally rather than looking at the logo from the outside in.

Bob: The most common problem is second guessing on the part of the client. Clients will often be happy with a solution as it addresses the criteria set out in the discovery process. They then gather opinions from outside of that process and some are bound to be dissenting. This can lead to them second guessing their instincts and it throws a wrench in the process. it’s fine to seek further opinion but when bringing the feedback to the designer, listen to that professional’s advice. They are the experts in this endeavour. A designer needs to listen to all the input but in the end, it his his/her recommendation that should hold the most weight.

There you have it—insight from three experienced design professionals about logo development. I hope that if you are embarking on a complete re-branding or simply a logo makeover, this post will help you along the design process.

I’d love to hear about your experiences with logo development. Why not leave a comment?

Greeter program powerful PR

This past weekend, my husband Steve and I travelled to Chicago for the first time. We had a fabulous visit but one experience stands out from the rest. We took a tour of Millennium Park with a Chicago Greeter. When it comes to communicating the character and history of a city, this volunteer-based program can’t be beat.

Tourists can book a time and location/neighbourhood with a passionate and knowledgeable volunteer to get to know the city through a local resident. It’s totally free. We did a 3-hour tour of Brooklyn in New York through the same program a couple of years ago and it rocked too.

What makes it great are the stories these volunteers tell. They not only show you the significant landmarks and tell you the “official” history of the area but they make these places come alive by telling you of their own personal experiences of the neighbourhood. They’ll tell you about things such as how they played stick ball as a kid on a particular street and about the day the corner store burned down as well as stories about particular friends and neighbours. They present as uncensored ambassadors for the city they live in and love.

These two experiences demonstrated to me just how powerful stories are in communication. I probably won’t remember the historical dates or even the street names I visited but I’ll remember the stories these volunteers told and the real sense of what it’s like to live in these two great American cities. I’ll also remember the passion these volunteers exuded on these tours. These are people (often retired) who care enough about where they live to share what they love about the place with others.

I’m not sure what the infrastructure costs of these programs are but I’m sure the department of tourism offices that sponsor them get a great return on investment. This is a truly great PR program.

Tips for effective brochures

Despite all the Web 2.0/social media hype, the printed corporate pamphlet/brochure remains a communications workhorse in the public relations world. They’re great to hand out at conferences or in sales meetings and they’re easily portable. But don’t just throw together a laundry list of of your products and services and slap it all into a three-fold format. Creating an effective brochure without thought, planning and careful attention, will just create a useless pile of expensive paper.

Following a few guidelines will set you on your way to creating something worthwhile.

Know your audience
This is always your first step with any writing assignment. If you are unclear about the people you are speaking to in your brochure, you won’t know what tone or style of writing to use and worse, who won’t know what message you want to convey.

Actually define your audience. Figure out its age range and motivation for being interested in your organization, product or service.

Figure out your message
The purpose of a brochure is not to merely convey information. The purpose of a brochure is to motivate the reader towards some type of behaviour. You want them to take some kind of action, whether that’s buying your product, making a lifestyle change or donating money to your cause.

Think of your message in these terms to create the copy that will motivate your audience towards the desired behaviour. To get at this, start by asking the WIFM question (WHAT’S IN IT FOR ME?) from the perspective of your audience. For example, I might donate money to cancer research because I know someone who has died from the disease. I might be motivated to buy a hybrid car or a scooter because I’m fed up with the high price of gas.

Write to pursued
OK, you know who your audience members are and you know what motivates them. Now you need to use this information to write your brochure.

A proven formula for effective persuasive writing follows a behavioural framework.

1. Raise a public concern, need or interest
2. Present a credible solution or way to address the above
3. Outline the benefits of taking action and the perils of doing nothing at all
4. Deliver a call to action (what do you want the reader to do?)

There are many creative ways to follow the formula. You can use examples, story telling or attention-grabing/provocative statements.

Other tips

Use the active voice
Don’t bore your audience to death by writing in passive voice. Passive voice makes the subject of the sentence the recipient of the action rather than the doer. It’s harder to read and pay attention to.

Example: “The carrot was eaten by the rabbit” (passive). “The rabbit ate the carrot” (active)

Passive voice writing can sneak up on you so you need to be vigilant. Mircrosoft Word’s readability stats in the grammar and spell check feature is helpful here as it will tell you what percentage of your sentences are passive. The lower the better.

Keep it short
Edit, edit and edit. Go over the copy for your brochure several times (with time in between readings) to see if you can use fewer words to get your point across. People are not prone to read long paragraphs and columns in a brochure.

Plenty of white space
This is related to the above. Don’t cram tons of text into a small brochure. You want some room for design elements and white space. White space makes a brochure easier to read. Your readers will not be overwhelmed by the number of words they have to wade through to get your message. This makes it more likely that they WILL read your brochure.

Test it out
Once you have your brochure copy the way you think you want it, give it to several people who don’t work at your organization. Can they understand it? Would they be compelled to take some kind of action as a result of reading it? Fix what isn’t working.

I’d love to hear what you think of these brochure writing tips. Am I missing anything? Do you have any tips of your own for making sure you have an effective brochure? Please share your thoughts by sending a comment.

How do you track your media coverage?

Does your organization have a media monitoring program in place? If your company or non-profit regularly seeks media attention, it should have a set of procedures in place to monitor and evaluate media coverage. A media monitoring program aims to meet the following objectives:

1. To track relationships between your organization and individual media outlets/reporters.

2. To monitor mention of your organization, its programs and/or staff in order to evaluate brand strength, positioning and the need to correct erroneous information in the public sphere.

3. To evaluate trends in media reporting in order to identify information gaps and to guide what kind of information to release to media.

4. To aid in the evaluation of the effectiveness of your organization’s public relations campaigns

There are a number of tools available to assist with media monitoring including paid monitoring services, which can be a significant investment, as well as subscribing to Google Alerts (no cost) to track items posted on the Web. The advantage of a paid subscription to a media monitoring service is that it will track exactly what you’re looking for and will provide you with clippings/video of everything that’s being published/broadcast.

Media monitoring also fits into the evaluation process of any pubic relations campaigns your organization undertakes. One of the reasonably priced tools available to assist you in this area is the Media Relations Rating Points system. This tool allows you to set specific goals for your campaign and then provides you with a way to equate a value to all of those goals. Without this kind of measurement, it’s difficult to say if your campaign was successful or not.

What I want to discuss in more detail here is a no-cost, easy to use system to keep track of your media coverage. If you’re just tossing newspaper clippings into a file folder somewhere, I suggest you think about taking a new approach. You need a media log.

What’s a media log?

It’s is a simple log/recording of all media requests coming into the organization. It is best created in an Excel document so that you can search and sort info easily.

Why have it?

A media log assists you in evaluating the contacts/relationships you have with specific media outlets and reporters.

It can help to identify concerns with particular outlets/reporters so that you can plan to address them (e.g. always misquoted, description of organization incorrect, inappropriate language to explain issue etc.). Committing this info to a spreadsheet ensures the information is available organization-wide—not just in the memories of individual staff members.

It will also assist with evaluating public awareness campaigns by keeping track of the coverage generated by media releases.

What to include

Consider including the following columns (note- this is set up for a national organization):

Date
Media Outlet
Reporter
Contact info
City
Province
Local/National?
Topic
Interview? (yes/no)
By Whom?
Published/not published?
Quality of Coverage (low, med., high)
Solicited/unsolicited?
Comments

How to use it

• Make sure you fill info out on each media call. If the person assigned to do this is not available to take the call, whoever does needs to relay the necessary information to him/her. Consider placing the log on a shared drive so others have access to it at all times.

• Before passing a media call onto your organization’s spokesperson, search the log for reporter/outlet and review past coverage.

• If there has been a concern with coverage in the past, pass along this information to the spokesperson. This information can inform him/her about how to approach an interview. Being able to acknowledge the reporter’s previous coverage can also help with relationship building.

• Use it in combination with media monitoring service information to evaluate trends, gaps etc. You should do this monthly, creating a brief summary report of data.

Once a media log is set up, it’s relatively easy to administer. It’s a great no-cost tool.

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