What makes a good logo is a popular question, and an even more popular topic for bloggers!

There are many ingredients that go into designing a good logo – most logo designers agree that a good logo will be flexible, timeless, memorable, and easy to reproduce. So if you can achieve each of these things you’ve got yourself a good logo!

I could break these up into a nice little list and go through each step, however over the years I have found that by keeping everything simple, you can achieve pretty much everything I have written above. Logo design doesn’t have to involve a complicated check-list of requirements – if you keep it simple, everything else should fall into place.

Let’s look at the facts:

Timelessness. Simple logos age well because there is nothing in them to define a particular moment. Design trends are great, they keep everything looking fresh and exciting, but if you apply this to your logo designs they will look great for a year, maybe 2, but then look dated and terrible. It’s no different to fashion. I felt great in 2001 wearing my converse, khaki combats and a denim jacket strutting my stuff around London, but if I walked out now in the same outfit I would look dated and behind the times! But…if you wore the simplest outfit possible (lets say a pair of jeans with a black t-shirt) you’d be neither in fashion, or out of fashion – just timeless.

Reproduction. Simple logos reproduce well because they simple shapes are easy to reproduce! The Apple logo is a classic example of this – it’s just as clear and recognizable when it’s shrunk down on a mouse, as it is when blown up to 100ftx100ft and plastered on a billboard in New York. A funky multi-colored detailed logo will look fine on a billboard, but problems become obvious once you start trying to apply it small items like t-shirts, pen and business cards.

Memorable. This should be obvious, the simpler a design anything is, the easier it is to remember. As far as the human brain goes, shapes and patterns are no different to words – If I gave you 2 words to remember, it wouldn’t take any effort to recall these words back to me 24 hours later. However if I gave you 10 words to remember you would either need to make a conscious effort to remember them, or most likely the brain will only recall 3-5 of the words. In the business world, if a potential client goes to a trade-show, or flicks through a magazine and can remember your company name over a competitor’s – you’ve already won the first race. This is why it pains me to see overly fussy text being used in logos – it may look nice, but it’s terrible for marketing.

Flexibility. By flexibility I mean to give a flexible message. Designing a logo that is flexible in application is always one of my main goals. I want to give my clients the flexibility to place their mark on a variety of materials with a variety of messages. A company’s brand is so much more than just their logo and I think this tends to get overlooked by clients who think their logo is the only vehicle available in which to convey their corporate message. Of course a logo is only a small fraction of a brand, and a business can (and should) have different demographics, each with a different message. For example, Nike are currently running multiple campaigns, two of them are very different. One is a funky advert promoting the world cup, everything is fun and colorful; but the other advert is a serious somber piece with Tiger Woods talking about his fathers death. The logo, being simple, can be passive to these different messages and can embody the varying tone and message of other materials.

So you can see, if you keep everything simple chances are you’ll end up with a logo that is flexible, timeless, memorable, and easy to reproduce!

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