Redesigning Your Logo Can Improve Your Business in 3 Ways
Business technology, strategies and communication change with time to improve your business growth and redesigning your logo plays a big role.
If we look at Reebok’s evolution of logos, we can get a very clear picture of how design impacts a brand’s communication over decades. Their logo got simpler, less symbolic, and more minimal overtime.
Logo design is the first step of a rebrand and one that is usually carefully considered.
Making a change to an already established brand identity, no matter how small, can have a huge impact and not always good. You can even see evidence of this in the various Reebok logo designs above, where Reebok revisited previous design elements that were better received by their audience.
How do you know if redesigning your logo is the right thing to do?
Well, that’s a great question…
There are a few guides that can help you determine whether or not a logo redesign is in order:
- Age and Style – Just like your home decor and trending color pallets, your logo can and will get out dated. A lot of times you may even spot this before your customers do. A good indicator is when you take a look one of your recent ads, catalogs, commercials and think to yourself, hmm… I’m sick of that logo.
- Corporate Vision – Sometimes your business makes necessary changes to keep up with the times and technology, maybe even consumer demand. It can happen that your business goals, strategies and overall vision change along with these things. If so, the logo you started with originally may not be a good reflection of who and where you are now.
- Corporate Growth – Not all businesses stay small forever. If you have a corporation that has grown enough to absorb other companies, expand products and service offerings in such a way that the brand you started with doesn’t cover what you’ve become — it’s a great time to think about redesigning your logo.
How a Logo Re-designing Enhances Business Growth
As we touched on above, for entrepreneurs, staying relevant is essential. Redesigning your logo is like changing your hair style or your favorite pair of jeans — it’s a way to stay relevant and connected to those around you ie: your customers.
The change in shape, color, and styles will have a direct influence over people from very different economic and social backgrounds. The needs of young millennials and middle-aged customers are quite different from one another, it should be taken into account while walking through the process. It conveys a new business message to your targeted audience. And also, getting customer’s immediate attention will add value to your branding strategy. Your logo design should also make an emotional connection to the people out there, they may be your stakeholders, your client, or a provider. Companies these days are paying more attention to their identity to ensure better consistency and performance for their businesses.
Let’s take a look at 3 ways redesigning your logo can actually enhance your business growth.
1. Simple Logo design, Broader Perspective
We’ve established that people pay attention to the logo that backs your brand. So, it should be something memorable and appealing. Something that your customer would recall while searching for your brand. It’s good to note that a logo design with too many details makes recall exponentially more difficult.
This is something that Starbucks identified and attempted to remedy in multiple stages, take a look at the images above. Over time they make modifications to use simple lines that are quite easy to retain with a stylish finish.
A logo is a representation of a brand as a whole, so eye-soothing colors or smart structures will have an impact on people viewing you business.
When it comes to redesigning your logo, minimalistic designs and classy constructs are effective in grabbing attention. It’s also worth mentioning that this simplification process makes it easier and more cost effective to reproduce brand imagery across media and products.
2. New Logo Introduces Your Brand to New Sets of Audiences
Customers are the most important thing when it comes to hatching business strategy. If you’re in the process of redesigning your business logo, then you can’t proceed further without giving your audience a thought.
Lifestyle has drastically changed over the last couple of years. Therefore, what has worked in past years may not workout for today’s consumers. Also, when you’re about to introduce a brand new logo you have to think about how your current audience might take it.
The GAP is a great example of clothing brand logo redesign that required in-depth audience research.
GAP Logo Rebranding
During the busy 2010 Christmas season, Gap suddenly launched a new and expensive logo and rebranded their company with no prior warning.
The original logo design, which had served the company for more than 20 years, disappeared without a trace overnight and got replaced with an image of the word Gap in bold font and a small blue square.
As soon as people realized the change was permanent and no mistake was made by an intern, the internet community started sniggering about the logo.
It was clear that nobody liked the design, because it went against everything the company stood for.
Gap is a brand associated with simplicity and familiarity, in the sense that when you enter one of their stores, you know exactly what you are getting, regardless of location.
So, you can probably see why a sudden and drastic redesign of their logo, as well as an unannounced rebranding move, left so many people dissatisfied.
To give credit where credit is due, Gap performed one of the fastest rebranding turnabouts of all time and went back to the original design just six days after raising possibly millions of suspicious eyebrows.
3. Embrace Your Brand Identity with Design that Stands out!
Marketing trends are dynamic, so is the psychology of the buyers and they always adapt to new circumstances. The logo is considered to be one essential marketing tool and the decision of recreating may change the entire scenario for your brand. Social media is simply taking over our lives and it is getting more and more challenging to stay relevant to a generation for whom news arrives faster than the morning coffee.
For example, if you can look at Apple’s logo, for the past few years, it has evolved in every true sense since 1976. They started with a pretty conventional ’70’s theme, then after a colorful graphics, it came down to a simple and classy silver.
Within a few months after their first logo, the company went for a 360-degree design overhaul and came up with a simple multi-colored Apple’s logo, which they tweaked further to make it more simple and minimal.
In a nutshell, simple is the new classy. A simplistic design is easily recognizable and memorable.
Today, Apple owns one of the most popular brand logos in the entire world. Choosing a new age visual image for a brand it can position itself in a highly competitive market while winning over customers.
Rediscover Your Brand while Recreating the Logo
In the sage words of Michael Scott, “Keep it Simple Stupid”.
It is important to come up with a symbol that speaks for your brand, communicates to the people out there. Innovation and originality are two of the most key inputs of branding strategy and a unique, sound logo design with a positive approach will going to add value in the long run. The correct balance is what you should look for while redesigning it all over again.
