How important is it for a company to have a great logo?

Logos are a critical aspect of business marketing. As the company's major graphical representation, a logo anchors a company's brand and becomes the single most visible manifestation of the company within the target market. For this reason, a well-designed logo is an essential part of any company's overall marketing strategy.

Purpose

Corporate logos are intended to be the "face" of a company: They are graphical displays of a company's unique identity, and through colors and fonts and images they provide essential information about a company that allows customers to identify with the company's core brand. Logos are also a shorthand way of referring to the company in advertising and marketing materials; they also provide an anchor point for the various fonts, colors and design choices in all other business marketing materials.

Brand Identity

Logos are the chief visual component of a company's overall brand identity. The logo appears on stationery, websites, business cards and advertising. For that reason, a well-designed logo can contribute to business success, while a substandard logo can imply amateurishness and turn off potential customers. However, a logo should cohere well with other aspects of a company's visual presentation: No logo, however well designed, can look good when surrounded by contradictory graphical elements or inconsistent fonts. This is why a logo is the basic unit of a larger brand identity that includes company fonts, colors and document-design guidelines.

Common Mistakes

Small businesses often play it fast-and-loose with logos, paying insufficient attention to their proper size and positioning and surrounding them with materials--including clipart--that compete with them visually. Avoid re-creating different types of logos for specific purposes (e.g., letterhead and business cards) or having similar-but-not-identical versions for print and online purposes

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