Marketing Intelligence – The Synaxis Blog

Website overhauls often cause a rousing and lively discussion leading to long meetings, lists of lists to be collected, strategic decision-maker input, and sometimes even talking to the end users about the site. And it seems inevitable that all of these goals and ideas need to be wrapped in a cleaner and newer interface design with a dash of the latest marketing trends. And it has to be better than your competitors (or other departments). Then the technology questions hit.
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Often those in the industry (graphic designers even!) think a designer’s job is to do that and only that—design. That is, the job is supposed to be to create a design that visually communicates the brand strategy and receive the “thumbs up” from the client. Check. Check out . . . well, not quite.
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What makes a great logo design? I think it is a combination of technical, strategic and aesthetic factors that combine in just the right way. Often, if the typography was just slightly larger, or the color was just a shade brighter, it wouldn’t work. Let’s face it—it’s difficult to design a smart, successful logo that resonates with an audience. It is elusive and complicated, and you can’t always identify why it works. It’s much easier to spot a poorly designed logo and know why it’s unsuccessful. Below are three suggestions to correct the missteps I see most often.

1. Create your initial logo as a vector file.
“Vector” logos, or logos built in Postscript, allow for maximum usage. You can scale the size of vector files greatly without loss of quality or sharpness. This means that the same logo file that looks great on a business card will also look great on a billboard­. Also, vector graphics are small in file size. This makes them much easier to manage and share. The bottom line—for print design, a vector logo will always look and act best. Your design agency will typically start with a vector logo, but can provide Web-friendly files from this format also.

2. Design your logo in black and white – at first.
It is best to avoid color while in the first round of logo design. If you design a logo that works without color first, you can avoid the possibility of the logo relying on color for its visual impact. This is important because most logos end up being displayed in black and white at some point­—in a newspaper or on a fax or copy. Once you do add color, it is best to limit it to two if you can. Too many colors can confuse the eye rather than helping to focus it. Limiting your colors will also save you money during the printing process. Since there is no limitation to color usage on screen, many companies shave been tempted to overuse color in their Web design. Bad design, however, is bad design in any context.

3. Simplify. Simplify. Simplify
Overly complicated logos are often difficult to read and understand. This is true even at a large scale, but especially so when reduced in size. And since these complex logos are difficult to really see, they are almost impossible to remember or recognize. Companies often mistakenly perceive their logo as their entire brand platform. Thus, they try to communicate everything about their company in the mark, instead of the essential, overarching qualities. You do need to put a lot of complex thought into your logo behind the scenes, but you do not want the viewer to see that in excessive detail work, color, or font usage. It is best to communicate a company’s brand attributes with a clean, simple logo design.

4. Always consider your logo’s size and ratio.
As a rule, logos should be recognizable and readable at a quarter inch. At some point, most logos will need to be reproduced at a very small size—on a plastic pen, key chain or usb drive. It is also best if your logo is not overly horizontal or vertical. Most logos will not be a perfect square, but a conservative width to height ratio is ideal. A balanced mark is adaptable, making it easier to successfully place in a variety of layouts.

I went to the Masters Golf Tournament this week in Augusta, GA. I could go on and on about the tournament itself, but I’ll just talk about branding for the purposes of this blog. We can talk golf in another blog elsewhere. Read the rest of this entry »

A merger acquisition is fraught with all kinds of difficulties, from operations to HR, to finance. There’s lots to figure out, even about how to do delivery. Not until all of this is taken care of do people usually begin to think about marketing, and then eventually, branding. I’d like to suggest that it should be done the other way around. Branding should come first. And then worry about your marketing, your advertising, your finance, operations and HR. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week Cam Beck wrote about the Myth of Brand Engagement, which he sees as the last thing your audience really wants. He starts with the strong claim that “The sad news is that your company’s brand isn’t nearly as important to your audience as it is to you.” But, then he backs off and says that brand engagement is “…important, and it can be done”. What’s the real story?
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In our business, we frequently meet people who feel that their company or product brand doesn’t fit them. Sometimes the brand used to fit, and sometimes it never did. Bad brands are almost always the result of failing to spend a small amount of money at the beginning. And, now they are facing spending much more money to correct the problems. The question is, what risks are present in re-branding?
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Good marketing and branding challenges, pushes, and cajoles companies into action and growth. And this is why companies buy work in marketing and branding in the first place: they want to achieve growth. What most companies don’t realize is that operating at this level is much harder than they thought.
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Over on his blog, Todd Miechiels wrote an
interesting post questioning whether b2b branding is relevant anymore. He says that micro-brands and one-to-one communication make brands unimportant.
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There is lots of talk about brand equity. It’s an important concept that is little understood. Today, we’ll talk about it in the context of your overall brand strategy.
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