Your company isn’t just a collection of equipment and random people striving to milk the world of as much money as possible. It’s a group of people brought together to pursue common goals, be creative – and yes, of course, earn a living. A company isn’t just a faceless behemoth picking people up by the ankles and shaking them until their loose change falls out, it’s a culture. The company culture encapsulates its values, its goals, and its vision.
Culture tends to be invisible from consumers and customers, for the most part, but they can get a glimpse of it – and decide how they feel about it – via the public face your company presents. Everyone will tell you that you need a great logo as part of your branding and marketing efforts, but you can’t just hire a graphic designer and say ‘Make me a logo!’ You have to communicate with them effectively to ensure that your culture is represented in your logo design.
The Language of Logo Design
It’s no secret that graphic designers speak a slightly different language than most everyone else – a visual language. So when you’re working with one to create a logo design for your company, you should start by trying to think visually yourself. Think about what you see every day at your offices: The people, the colours, and the equipment. Naturally you don’t want a logo that is essential Mary from Accounting standing at the photocopier – but imagining your team in action is a great place to start.
What characterises your team? Are they witty, young, and energetic? Are they experts? Are they soaked in curious lore that no one else possesses – are they inventing the future, or are they taking the tools that already exist and making them somehow better? Start there and think about what visually represents what you do.
This doesn’t have to be specific – the visuals you note down don’t have to necessarily make sense. But a graphic designer gets excited when they see visuals, and they will be able to translate those random images into something more coherent.
Have a Goal
Aside from simply assembling visual guides for your graphic designer to interpret and translate, you need to have a goal for your logo design. Capturing the culture and personality of your business is half the battle, the other half is how you want to be perceived and what you want your customers and partners and potential customers and partners to see at a glance.
Think about what you would say to a potential client – and then try again to put it into visual terms. Whatever adjectives and adverbs you come up with when you consider a new client or partner, tie it to a visual. Again, this won’t have to make total sense or even be practical – but it will help the graphic designer get inside what you want your logo to be.
– Artwork Abode
