A logo is so significant to a business or organization that you’ll be hard pressed to find one without the other. A logo sums up everything in a small, tidy ideogram, and it could help make or break a company. Some are clever, some are plain, but what is it that separates the brilliant from the bland? Here you’ll find the main things that make a logo great using examples from famous logos we see every day as well as some of my work done at GreenLeaf Imaging.
1. Simplicity:
You see it all the time, it’s a common theme among all the iconic corporations. IBM is nothing more than the text, Apple is a cut-out apple, and Target, one of the most popular department stores, is just a circle in a circle. Let’s look at another example: Nike, the shoe of athletes, is just a check. This simplicity allows it to appear just about anywhere and still look good. Some crazy complex logo would just be lost on anyone who sees it.
2. Narrow color scheme: 
A few choice “company colors” are also important for a logo to define the company. Normally, a good logo will have just one or two colors. The colors should both reflect some aspect of the company (eg my GreenLeaf Imaging logo is green) as well as be able to work in black/white. A complicated drawing with many colors may not be able to do that, and it would then be harder, say, to turn it into a large building-side sign.
3. 
Appropriate font type: If text is used in the logo, a font style can go a long way beyond making it easy or hard to read. Serif-style fonts (fonts with little lines on all the ends of the letters, such as in the AIG logo to the right) give a sturdy and trustworthy impression. Sans-serif fonts (which are smooth on the ends), on the other hand, can give a sleek, modern, and high-tech feel. How thick the font is could also influence the message it sends; a very thick font (like for Ben & Jerry’s) could give more of a fun feeling, while a thinner font (such as in the Nordstrom logo) gives the impression of being modern.
4. Memorable: 
Perhaps the most important trait of a logo is that it’s memorable. When someone looks at a logo, it has to immediately make a connection to the brand. To do this, it has to be simple, yet unique. The Apple logo, for example, is a simple cutout apple. However, with a big bite taken out of the side, it becomes unique and the symbol of the company. Make it a full green, even 3-D picture of an apple, and it becomes lost in thoughts of fruit bowls and orchards, nothing unique to a computer company.
When I design a logo, I make an effort to consider all these things so that the logo works wonders. A logo could be simple, bold, silly or serious, yet in the end it has but one result: to make define a company in the best way possible.
Ariel Lepor is the owner of the graphic design firm GreenLeaf Imaging.
Logos used in this article may be subject to trademark and/or copyright restrictions.
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