{"id":2806,"date":"2015-06-18T12:35:07","date_gmt":"2015-06-18T10:35:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/grupobcc.com\/?p=2806"},"modified":"2015-06-30T14:38:14","modified_gmt":"2015-06-30T12:38:14","slug":"how-to-build-an-unforgettable-logo%e2%80%b3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/grupobcc.com\/en\/news\/how-to-build-an-unforgettable-logo%e2%80%b3\/","title":{"rendered":"Martin Lindstrom, How to build an unforgettable logo"},"content":{"rendered":"
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No, you don\u2032t have to tell me, because I know what you\u2032re about to say: your new product is brilliant. It\u2032s a game-changer. Problem is, you need a killer logo, an unforgettable logo. Well, today, designers, inventors, and investors are facing a dilemma similar to the one that writers and artists have struggled with for decades: there\u2032s nothing left. Or here\u2032s another problem: if you do manage to create a jaw-droppingly clever or memorable image, rather than engendering widespread consumer recall of your brand, your Easter-blue palette risks looking uneasily similar to the Tiffany box, and your little black bull is a transparent rip-off of the one that dangles from the neck of Sangre de Toro red wine.<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
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As far as the logo is concerned, to paraphrase Bill Maher, it\u2032s time for New Rules. Today, what counts far more than a puma, a monkey, or a snarling aardvark is the cross-sensory experience your brand offers. I\u2032m talking not only the emotion, beliefs, and desires your brand evokes, but its feel, touch, sound, smell and personality, of which the logo is just one small part. Whether it\u2032s a soda can, a car, a doll, a fragrance, a smartphone, or laptop, your brand needs to be smashable, e.g., instantly identifiable via its shape, design, copy, contours, and even navigation. Aside from adolescents, who are always on the lookout for the unforgettable\u00a0logo to set them apart from, or help them gain traction with, their peers, today for most consumers the logo comes in near-to-last place to other considerations.<\/p>\n

Why? Well, various reasons. The first is, when we see a logo, our defenses go up and stay up. We feal we\u2032re being played, or manipulated. Not least, I might also add that subconsciously, a\u00a0unforgettable logo reminds us of our complicity with big brands, of our own shot-with-guilt overconsumption that helped drive the world\u2032s recent financial downfall.<\/p>\n

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The term “smashable” dates back to 1915, when the Coca-Cola company asked a designer in Terre Haute, Indiana, to design a bottle that consumers could still recognize as a Coke bottle, even if someone flung it against a brick wall and it shattered into a hundred pieces. Coke is a smashable brand. So are Guinness, Ferrari, Harley-Davidson and, of course, Apple (take a sledgehammer to an iPad and you\u2032ll know what I mean). Which suggests that the logo as we once knew and loved it–from Citibank\u2032s Scowling Umbrella (I don\u2032t know what else to call it), to Nike\u2032s Swoosh, to Starbucks\u2032s Whoever-The-Heck-She-Is–needs to be re-considered if it\u2032s going to play any role in future brand-building.<\/p>\n

Let\u2032s do a little experiment: Erase the unforgettable logo from every single one of your brand identifiers–products, stationary, signage. Close your eyes, now reopen them. Is there anything left? Would consumers still recognize those items as belonging to your brand? Look at your packaging, your copy, your colors, your design, your font, your spacing. Do any of them convey your brand\u2032s identity? Or without a logo are you adrift and bailing water?<\/p>\n

Next let\u2032s examine your website. Again, by eliminating the logo, you\u2032ll embark on a fun (I promise) and instructive exercise that will relieve you of any stubborn logo-fixations that may still be nagging at you. It\u2032s one that will force you into acknowledging the value that every single one of your communication elements plays in defining your brand\u2032s identity. Okay, still hiding the brand logo, eyeball your copy, your graphics, whether your pages are spare or dense-looking. Do all these things convey what your brand represents? Does your brand have a personality anymore, or is it standing shyly and stiffly against the wall, hoping no one notices it now looks (I hate to tell you) like every other brand out there?<\/p>\n

To wrap up, let\u2032s have a look at your navigation. By navigation, I\u2032m talking about everything from the iPod\u2032s clicking wheel, to the ritualized twist and snap you hear when you open your favorite soft drink, to Amazon\u2032s simple, one-click button you press to buy books or download them onto your Kindle. In my experience, once consumers have used Amazon a few times, they get hooked on the site\u2032s simplicity and navigational ease (During a recent round of focus groups, by a long shot Amazon was at the very top of consumers\u2032 favorite brands.). Sure, the site stocks every book (and everything else) under the sun, it over-delivers, it undersells iTunes, its data-mining techniques are on the positive side of creepy, but I\u2032m pretty sure that most consumers\u2032 loyalty to the company derives in large part from Amazon\u2032s incredible and intuitive ease of navigation.<\/p>\n

We\u2032re creatures of habit. Once we grow accustomed to a certain way of shopping, running, eating, drinking, shaving, brushing our teeth, showering, dressing, or any of 100 other things, our methodology becomes our own. Like the familiar, well-worn route we take to our favorite beach or restaurant, habit becomes personal, automatic, and unconscious. In the same way, navigational rituals are a vital, whispered element of any brand\u2032s attraction. Having said this, human beings are supremely adaptable. Basically, we can get used to anything. If you\u2032ve ever switched cell phones, or made the change from an Apple to a PC, yes, at first it felt obnoxious and foreign and even wrong. But once we became accustomed to that new environment–be it a trackball or a new, melodic suite of start-up and shut-down sounds–nothing else would do the trick.<\/p>\n

So reserve a brick wall, cock your arm, aim, and begin smashing your brand. While you\u2032re at it, smash your website, to ensure your brand remains consistent via your web pages\u2032 navigation, style, ease, and\/or special features. Now ask yourself: does my brand “own” this cross-sensory experience, from web to wireless to PDA, right down to the bricks-and-mortar product I\u2032m gripping in my right hand? If not, your carefully crafted unforgettable logo might as well not even exist.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No, you don\u2032t have to tell me, because I know what you\u2032re about to say: your new product is brilliant. It\u2032s a game-changer. Problem is, you need a killer logo, an unforgettable logo. Well, today, designers, inventors, and investors are facing a dilemma similar to the one that writers and artists have struggled with for… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2808,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\n\n\n\n\t\n