How to understand if your logo deserves to be brutally destroyed or, at least, redesigned? Designers of Logomachine decided to compose a little list of warning signs indicating that your logo is in danger. Besides, everyone love checklists. So sit back, relax, take a thoughtful look at your logotype and answer the following questions:

1. Do you need more than one phrase to describe your logo?

First of all, logo is a picture that should be easy to remember and understand, for example: “a bird is feeding its chicks in the nest”, “three stripes”, “bitten apple”, “crocodile”, etc. If your brand sign contents something like “burning beaver riding a unicorn while drinking soda from a skull of a horse with a gothic castle on the background”, we guess it’s a little too complicated and needs to be reconsidered.

Logo by logomachine.net

We know what we’re talking about. Here you can see example of such logo. It could be well drawn but just try to describe it to anyone: “Well… it’s a beefy bullfinch, wearing red hat and socks, with a tattoo… whatever, forget it!”

2. Does your logo indicates the field of your activities clearly?

How many car manufacturers use vehicles as their logos? Exactly. That’s what we’re talking about. Usually your logo is already shown in the field of your activities and compared to your opponents, — it’s way better to designate its personal unique style. It’s not the worth thing that can happen to a logotype, but it’s better to avoid too literal reflections.

3. Can your logo be equally used by both manufacturer of disposable lighters and an international bank?

It’s not that you should have a strict image that tells if you’re operating a bank or a gas station (remember previous paragraph), but you can reach your target audience by the means of visual style. Brand identity should help your customer understand the value of your product really fast and make the right choice.

4. Can your logo be reduced to the size of a matchbox and still be recognizable?

Situations when a logo should be reduced to a smaller size happen pretty often. Lets face it — if your logo can’t be recognized or the title can’t be seen properly it’s not a good thing. So it’s always better to prepare a lighter version of your logo to prevent such things from happening.

5. Does your logo burst with shadows, gradients and photoshop effects?

Sometimes different special effects are used to add more uniqueness to a sign or to make it look realistic. But you risk to lose your common sense here. Besides, such things as gradients and shadows can make an image look cheaper while making printing more difficult and expensive. Look at the most successful brands — they’re getting rid of the slightest sign of computerization. Even if first version of logo looks like complex three dimensional object, eventually it will be simplified.

Google Chrome logo evolution

6. Do some parts of the font look more dense than the others?

If you see that the space between the letters is impermanent it means that the designer didn’t work very hard on kerning. Remember that the right kerning facilitates the perception of text, that’s why it should be made qualitatively, once and for all. And it’s not as easy as it seems. Remember: one does not simply type in the company name and hope that it will look fine.

7. Does your logo contain more than one font?

Usually one font is enough. Well, maybe two but that’s enough enough for sure. There’s definitely no reason to write each word in the text part of your logo with different fonts. It usually comes from helplessness or fear of becoming ordinary and also hurts people’s eyes.

8. Is your logo the ONLY carrier of your brand identity?

Well, of course it all starts with a logo, but it doesn’t mean it should end with it. Logo is the main carrier of your brand identity and style. However your clients should feel the presence of your brand style in other things as well, otherwise they may think you don’t have any style at all. The perfect situation is when your brand style stays recognizable even if the logo is removed completely.