Before the logo, the question is a different one
A new logo won’t fix a brand that doesn’t know what it wants to say. Four strategy decisions worth settling before designing anything.
Many conversations about brand start at the end: “we need a new logo”. Often, though, what needs to change is not the form but what lies behind it: what makes the company different, who it speaks to and what it wants people to think of it.
Here are four decisions worth settling before designing anything, and a concrete way to check whether you already have them.
1. Positioning: a sentence you can complete
Positioning means choosing the place the brand wants to hold in the market and in its audience’s mind. A simple test is to complete this sentence: “We are the brand of ___ for ___ who want ___; unlike ___, we ___.” If you can only fill it with empty adjectives (innovative, high-quality, friendly), there is no positioning yet. It takes a look at competitors, context and audiences, and accepting that a brand cannot be everything to everyone.
2. Personality, values and promise
Three things, in writing: what the brand is like (personality), what it stands for (values) and what it promises and can deliver (promise). The promise deserves attention: if a brand says it is friendly, its automatic reply email should sound friendly too. A promise the company cannot keep at some touchpoint undoes the rest.
3. A name is a business decision
A good name is memorable, easy to pronounce, free enough in registers and domains, and able to grow with the business. Two practical tests: say it over the phone and see whether the person spells it correctly, and ask whether it will still make sense if the company does something else in five years.
4. Messages: what, to whom and in what order
A strategy without messages stays in a drawer. A short framework is enough: one main message, three arguments that support it and, for each, a fact the company can demonstrate. That way the website, social media and sales pitch say the same thing in different words.
And then, the logo
Once these four points are settled, design stops being a matter of taste: it has a criterion to decide by. And if none of this has changed, perhaps you don’t need a new logo.
At Hommu we work on brand, digital and technology from the same table. If you want to talk about it, write to us.