How not to design a logo

The corporate logo is today’s version of  ancient icons. Trademarks such as the Nike “Swoosh”, the Mac “Apple”, and Lacoste’s “crocodile”  have already  taken a strong hold of the public mind as the cross, crescent, swastika, yin-yang, hammer and sickle, and other old symbols did in the past and, in fact, continue to do so today. What does it  take to make a logo last? Surely repetitive advertising helps drum up the recall factor but no amount of it can save a really bad logo.

As faculty in a university-based design program, we are often commissioned to design logos or consulted for advice on existing ones, usually new ones that owners would like to be analyzed for possible defects prior to implementation.

In this sense, we act like a doctor giving a second opinion on another doctor’s work. If we had not been in the academe, it would have been more awkward to criticize the work of a fellow designer. But our long, though oft-ignored tradition of “peer review” gives academics the impression of scientific objectivity or neutrality that any competitive industry seeks.

Recently, I was asked to evaluate proposed in-house logos for colleges of another university outside of Cebu. Apparently, they were all the “winners” of a logo-design contest that the school launched to save on the cost of hiring the services of an expert. So the entries, the usual crowding of visual clichés (torch of knowledge stabbed into an open book, hands or a laurel leaf framing it, and the like), therefore were mostly submitted by students of the same school, which did not have a design program like ours.

And that’s just where the root of the problem is as logo, simple as it seems, actually requires more than gut feeling to make. As in everything that needs to be designed, it requires that its maker has a sensibility for good composition, a wide vocabulary of styles resulting from design history background, knowledge of industry procedures (print production, typography, etc.), and a strong sense of wit.

In other words, logo design requires  special training (which may be acquired by self education; alas, many of our own graduates produce bad logos!) and good taste (again, a pedigree is not guaranteed by a diploma).

As in all enduring symbols like the cross,  swastika, and the Star of David, logos must be iconic, that is, they  must have that austere form usually based on basic geometry. The great American graphic designer Saul Bass (who designed the “I heart NY”, Minolta, Continental, AT&T, etc.) calls his own approach of simplifying form to its barest essentials “reductive” design. This requires the elimination of superfluous details so that what remains is the austere iconic image.

When Nike was confident that the Swoosh, which is a calligraphic abstraction of speed, was  etched in global memory, they could afford to divest it with the cumbersome logotype or the text part of the logo. The logo thus becomes pure image, similar to the cross, the crescent, and other ancient icons.

Simplicity is also a matter of function. Logos need to be easy to reproduce by whatever printing method available and they should be easily blown up or shrunk from a print on a billboard to a ballpen. In the case of the latter, thin outlines and tiny details simply dissolve.

Also for this reasons, the use of too many colors, which could be expensive and not always available, is not really recommended. In fact, the best logos are often monochromatic (single color being more flexible). Too many colors also add clutter to a design.

How the logo should be printed should always be considered. The design should be friendly to even the most primitive means of printing: the silkscreen process, as used in t-shirts for example. Thus, those difficult-to-print vanishing tones and other graphic effects should just vanish.

Iconic design is often the result of a single striking image, usually marked by visual wit or an intelligent sense of humor. Filipinos have the tendency for horror vacui or the fear of empty spaces that I think has more to do with the fear of the client thinking that bare design could mean less effort. Thus, the itch to crowd the design with too many symbols, when all that is really required for it to work is a single image.

Indeed, “the best design is the least design.” And spare me of the attached rationale on why chosen colors are supposed to signify corporate ideals or the universal values. It’s more likely that the designer has simply thrashed his color theory in favor of the client’s favorite color.

Design never comes with a text beside it to explain why we’re supposed to like it. The logo, if it’s really good, must speak for itself and must evoke in us that immediate “smile in the mind”.