WHAT ARE THE QUALITIES OF A SUCCESSFUL LOGO?
I was an art teacher for forty years and one of my favorite classes to teach was Visual Communication, a class where students learned how to use text and illustration to communicate an idea. One area within the curriculum was logo design. I would tell my students how a logo was the visual representation of a company, a product, or an idea, and how it was important that the logo fully represented whatever the entity was. If it was a high brow financial institution it would require a very dignified look, or if the was a young funky sort of outfit the logo should be fun and playful.
I also tried to instill the idea that a good logo designer is someone who keeps up with current trends and that their logo designs would reflect that, but that a great logo designer is the one who is pushing boundaries, who is going beyond current trends and leading their audience into new understandings, in other words, causing them to think.
I often told students, make something that people will remember, something that hasn't been done , take old ideas and blend them with new directions.
One of the current trends in design is the idea of gestalt, which simply means, seeing the whole from a sum of its parts. Its the idea of concealment, not showing all the parts but still being able to see the idea. You will notice in the logo I designed below you can see the word YUNK, but not all the letters are fully visible. This adds excitement and movement to letters that otherwise would be static.
A good logo works well in large formats.
You will see logos displayed on billboards, on the sides of semi trucks, on the windows and walls of buildings, who knows they may even be projected into the sky.
A good logo works well small.
You will see logos on business cards, on promotional buttons, on ball caps, on the side of an ink pen and even printed on candy.
A good logo works well in both color and black and white.
There is a practicality to good design and that is to fully understand the functions of a logo. Every good logo designer knows that there will be times when a logo is required to be printed in black and white. Many times this is to reduce the cost of advertising, printing in black and white is cheaper.