Logo Planning

[TiedemanLLC]

I am curious to the number of businesses that have logos how much thought have you actually put into the logo. 1) Did you do any color research on what sells? 2) Did you do research on your demographics (women and men prefer different colors)? 3) Can you seperate words from your logo easily? 4) Can the logo by in black and white? 5) Can you resize the logo and still be able to see it? 6) Did you research on what shapes sell better? 7) Is there more than one font in your logo? I am just curious.

[knosaj]

Lawn care business tips

I am currently making decisions for a start up myself. Small wekend type pay off bills before baby gets here type thing. So, i am going through this process now as well. Most of my experience has been in graphic design and illustration. It does play a major roll in advertising but I think that ultimatly you can have any logo as long as your service is good. While browsing this and other landscape forums for start up advice, I start asking, "why in the hell are they using that name, or logo." Ayway, There are endless ways to choose your business "identity" and your are correct on most of your considerations. At the top of the list of considerations, is target market. The hard thing for most of us we want it all. But if you can narrow it down to only the rich people with 6 million dollar residences, or only grounds keeping for commercial accounts, etc. then that might help, but, maybe not in this perticular line of work. Here is one core rule of marketing to consider. Ever notice how breakfast cereal is expensive, but the colors are bright pinks and greens, yellow and such. It for two reasons, one so that it catches children's eyes, second, and this applies to us, it gives the emotion of cheap or inexpensive. Same rule applies to coffee, notice how all the packaging is deep dark, rich colors. Makes the buyer feel like the coffee will be the same in flavor. Knowing this, has made me heavily consider my own logo for a lawn service business. Do I go bright cheap, maybe getting the potentiall customer the feeling of fast, affordable, on a glossy card or (think landscape architect) do with something a bit more timeless, rich, clean design nice fonts on A nice rag card. If I knew how to post images from this iPad thing yet I'd provide examples. Some people with think This is BS. But to the viewer who has never heard of your business and going off looks alone, this will matter. If you have some silly name like "grasstallica" that looks like the logo of a very whiny band then you may be passed up for the person who's logo speak solidity, quality, and economy, (maybe not economy if you want to appear, rich (like the coffee)) The style of my logo that i settled on coincided with the name I chose, and the image I wanted to have. They should compliment one another.. To answer your questions. 1. Yes, red is the most powerful color in advertising. But you also need to consider your industry. Think greens, blues, and earth tones. Heck maybe purples and such it could work if done correctly.....remember the cereal theory. I was considering oranges and purples. Almost like fed ex. 2. What does your competition look like? You want to stand out. Men / women, yes colors work, but I'm not sure I would go that far in this context. Good thinking though. 3 on. Graphic clarity is VERY important. I see so many that bog their logo down with graphic crud. Swoops and all sorts of elements that well, look t Like sh!t. Make it clean and simple not boring and contains a bit of "movement" if possible. Look at Nike. Perfect logo. Simple as can be. Recognizable. Can be reproduced at any Scale in ONE color. I would not do more than 2 so that it stays simple and printing and such will be cheaper. For Modern day digital presses that print one, or full color All the same it doesn't matter. But if screen printing, embroidery, and some others it does and costs could go up some. Spaces, well look around and start noticing what is around. I used just text only. Manipulating fonts slightly can give you really good results. I may have rambled so I opplogize if this was Long and incoherent. If you get some, pop me up and I can throw in my 2 cents. I don't know anything about professional landscaping yet, but this is an area I can help in. Hope this did some.

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Last edited by knosaj; 02-03-2012 at 07:23 AM.

[TiedemanLLC]

Good Reply.

One of the reasons for my post is because I don't think we really put that much time and energy into making our logo. I don't feel we thoroughly go through what will grab the buyers attention, what triggers feelings, and what buyers remember.

[shadrach]

Read a little bit about the colors & looked around to see what others in the area used & tried to have mine look unique in comparison. Thought a little bit about how it would look on a vehicle & how would look on uniforms. Paid a design company to do it - started with 15 or 18 "drafts" Took ideas from 3 or 4 - (colors,font & design elements) and mixed them up a bit. Went back & forth on different ideas for about 2 weeks before I picked one. Had lots of other people look at it to get outside input as well.

[TiedemanLLC]

Another reason that I am bringing this up is because we are going through a logo change this year. After almost 9 years with the same logo, we have decided to change it.

[The Cleaning Doctor]

A couple of things to think about is....

1. Number of colors. The more colors that you have the higher your printing costs are going to be.

2. Keepit uncluttered. Keep the logo simple and uncluttered. If it looks too busy it detracts from the log. Think of the ones that you recognize Coke, Pepsi, Fedex, UPS etc. They are all simple word logos and well branded. You logo needs to be brandable. People do not care unless it looks too busy. I just did a simple logo with one graphic in the background of mine.

3. Background color. If you design a logo that looks good on white, how is it going to look on your blue truck etc? Same thing with a black background, how will it look on letterhead?

[WeedTerminatorTom]

I think Cheese's post of some statistical information on color research/psychological effects was very helpful. Colors have a strong influence on a customer's decision to spend money, especially in the consumer/residential realm, vs. the business realm where customers need to base their decisions more on quantified analysis, but the decision-maker's intuition may still come into play.

A logo should be easily replicated on different media like business cards, website, flyers, etc. I decided to keep mine minimal, and to try to say as much as possible with less.

Great thread**very important!
Tom

[Steve]

Great discussion. I think most of the time, logos don't get much thought in their creation because there is just too much going on with everything else tied to running the business. Most business owners of start ups tend to just go with anything for their logo or the first thing that pops into their head simply because they are so overwhelmed with everything else.

[TiedemanLLC]

Originally Posted by Steve

Great discussion. I think most of the time, logos don't get much thought in their creation because there is just too much going on with everything else tied to running the business. Most business owners of start ups tend to just go with anything for their logo or the first thing that pops into their head simply because they are so overwhelmed with everything else.

I totally agree. I remember my first logo when we started was just some clip art. Then we had one designed, but now we are ready for an upgrade again. Something that will geared more to our women clients (they make up around 75% of our client base).

[Steve]

I can't wait to see what you come up with.