Why Logo Is The Key To Visual Identity Strategy

Beginning every branding workshop, presentation or introduction to a new client we always affirm that a brand is more than a logo. Whilst this is true and we intensely stand by this statement, there’s great value in how a logo impacts the brand and the visual identity.

Great logos lead to great branding and great branding can lead to great brand performance, increasing customer preference and loyalty.

The Handshake of Your Brand

The first thing people see and what they consistently engage with is the logo. The most influential brands we see today have a strong, identifiable logo that’s adapted and played off of in line with events and their own evolution.

A strong logo enables a brand to stand out in their industry, differentiate themselves from their competitors and increasing customer recall.

A great exercise to measure the recall of your brand is to ask a group of people to draw your brand in 30 seconds. What is the result? Are their similarities across the sketches? Are those similarities expected?

This exercise can help you identify the core elements of your brand that can inspire the visual identity; this is where your logo evolves into a catalyst for design.

The Logo as a Catalyst

A logo is the inspiration for everything that follows.

A strong logo will be crafted from the brand’s position, using attributes of the brand to inspire creative expression. Brands that have a strong understanding of this will easily translate that through their identity.

The logo and its elements form the story of the visual identity, working as the visual identity is built from micro elements of the logo.

When done correctly, this increased consistency provides control of the impressions you are making on your customers, creating a thread between logo, brand and visual identity.

Consistency In The Mobile World

Logos must work across many forms but most importantly in the mobile space where each person has their collection of preferred brands on their wrist, in their pockets and in the palm of their hand.

Logos need to stand out against a torrent of other brands using a square inch of space, whilst simultaneously working online, in print and across products.

Whilst many mobile logos are an adaptation of existing logos, many logos have been modified to be mobile first.

Listen to The Advice of Ian Spalter, Head of Design at Instagram

This thinking is well documented in the Netflix series ‘Abstract: The Art of Design’ which interviews Ian Spalter, Head of Design at Instagram.

In this show he speaks of the need to evolve the app and redesign the logo, which co-founder and original logo designer Kevin Systrom was starkly against.

His challenge was to take the Instagram logo, which was known and loved by hundreds of millions of users and transform it into the contemporary flat logo design that’s become common place across modern mobile design.

After the release of the new Instagram logo Ad Week joined a barrage of criticism by writing an article describing the logo as ‘The worst design decision ever,’ but Spalter stood by his design, knowing what it meant for the rest of Instagram’s identity.

Today, with over a billion users, Instagram is one of the most popular apps globally.

The simplification of the logo operates as a catalyst for other changes Spalter wanted to make, as simplifying the visual identity and UX allows Instagram to do what it was born to do – let the photos be the hero.

Want a logo that will cut through? Get in touch today