Take a ride down any major road in America and you’re bound to find at least one of the following; a post office, a pizza place, or even a McDonald’s. Any successful business has gotten to where they are because of three major factors, product, business structure, and a solid corporate identity – in this case, a strong, easily recognizable logo.
Corporate identity can make or break a business almost as easily as its product or business structure. When I’m stuck at work and want to order a pizza, I immediately think Dominos. It’s just that simple. Simple is a key term to remember here, because the more complex the logo becomes, the more likely you are to lose clientele. In addition to simplicity, it’s important for a logo to be up to date and relevant to the target audience while trying to attract new consumers as well. Apple’s first logo was of Sir Isaac Newton sitting under an apple tree. While visually attractive, it’s hardly the face of a company that has changed the world of computing over the past few decades.
Would McDonald’s be where it is today without those golden arches? If Sega decided to go back to their original name of Service Games of America, would they have ever been as popular? Would Nintendo be what they are today if all they made were playing cards?
Being up to date not only doesn’t get any simpler, it can also get much more expensive. As times are changing, so are costs, and they are constantly on the rise. According to Aziz Ali of PSFK, Stock Logos, the largest corporate identity design community, created a list of well-known logos, the people or companies who designed them, and what it cost to design them. The numbers were all over the place. Some companies such as Pepsi paid the Arnell Group $1,000,000 to design the logo, completely rebranding their product. According to the Seattle Times, Microsoft asked its employees to redesign their logo, saving an estimated $250,000-$500,000.
Anything worth doing is worth doing right. If one intends to take one’s business to the level of a McDonald’s or an online marketing company, then that company needs to brand itself with an image to match its product that is easily recognizable and memorable.
