A logo is one of your branding’s fundamental components, regardless of your business size or model. A visually arresting logo makes your company instantly recognizable and memorable. It distinguishes you from the competitors and acts as a beacon for the loyal customers to guide them towards your brand.
Design professionals like Penji understand the significance and effectiveness of a good logo. A logo to deliver results and create positive associations for the consumers needs to have several qualities. One of the essential traits of a great logo is simplicity.
It is understandable to confuse “simple” with “boring.” When you imagine a unique logo for your brand, you might expect it to be intricate and multifaceted. After all, if you are paying good money to get a professionally designed logo, you want it to resonate in the design.
However, experts understand that clarity is more important than complexity while logo designing. You want a simple logo that immediately grabs attention, expresses your brand’s unique identity, and is memorable. On the other hand, too many design elements will confuse the audience to understand what you want to convey.
To elaborate, here is why your logo should be simple:
- Delivers a clear message
A logo is the graphical representation of your brand and communicates your business’s fundamentals in an aesthetically attractive way. It often explains at a glance who you are and what you do.
According to Forbes, you have seven seconds to make a first impression. If people spend a significant chunk of this time trying to decode a complex and cluttered logo, you are wasting precious seconds critical for creating a powerful initial impact.
Moreover, a busy logo is confusing, frustrating, and simply discouraging for the audience. It fails to serve its original purpose and leaves the people wondering what you are trying to say. They could instead be spending time perusing the amazing products you sell.
Thus, you want a simple logo that has a slim chance of being misinterpreted and misunderstood. A targeted and concise logo represents a brand that is sure of its identity and confident in its transactions.
- Easy to remember
People trust a brand that evokes familiarity and reliability. To have a memorable business, you need to have a logo that is easy to remember. A humble logo is far more impressionable than a complicated one as it is easier to commit to memory and does not require a conscious effort to recall. Even a fleeting glance is sufficient to extract the logo’s image imprinted in the brain.
On the other hand, an elaborately designed logo may seem appealing and impressive, but it eventually becomes visually cumbersome to remember. It overloads the brain and is just not worth the effort. With a barrage of information constantly overloading a human brain, the last thing you want is to have a difficult logo that adds to the burden.
- Instantly recognizable
You want to generate brand awareness so that consumers remember your brand and have positive associations with it. You want to gain substantial brand loyalty, which compels the customers to buy from you repeatedly. If they see your logo somewhere, they should immediately recognize it and be drawn towards it.
A modest logo is highly recognizable regardless of its size or position. It allows people to identify it instantly. Even if it is printed on a smaller medium, they catch a glimpse of it from the corner of their eyes, or they notice it as they are whizzing past by it.
Furthermore, first-time clients who are impressed with your products, customer service, and business ethics may not remember your commercial name. However, they will quickly recognize your logo amongst the clutter, so make it simple and appealing.
- Explicable
Once you have achieved your goal to create a loyal consumer base, the next step is to expand it. Referral marketing is a powerful way to highlight your brand. Since it uses word-of-mouth and originates genuinely from the previous customers, it is more effective than the paid advertisement. Therefore, you should do everything in your power to leverage referral marketing, including designing a logo that is simple to explain.
For example, a person liked a product or service you sell and wants to direct a friend to your physical store. If your logo is chaotic, it can get annoyingly challenging to describe the specifics. However, it is far easier to say, “It is the store with a bitten apple on the front!”
- Scalable
In today’s world, a logo appears on a plethora of media outlets, ranging in size from giant billboards to social media posts viewed on mobile screens. Thus, a good logo should be scalable and versatile, so it does not lose its branding power and visuals when published on different mediums.
A straightforward logo adapts seamlessly to any deigning element. Since it is often a singular image or a brand name, you can make it big or small without losing its efficacy. Conversely, a logo with too many components might look like an illegible blob when scaled down in size, such as when printing on a visiting card or a social media post.
The bottom line is that the perfect logo is a simple one that looks intriguing regardless of its size or color.
- Triggers emotional reaction
The highest achievement of a fantastic logo is its ability to trigger emotions. It is a unique form of human marketing, elicited by a brand that genuinely cares about its consumers and strives to provide the best buying experience.
An unpretentious design is more likely to prompt an emotional reaction spontaneously, as the brain can process it faster and more efficiently. On the other hand, cognitive processing overtakes the emotional impact when viewing a complicated logo.
- Conveys professionalism
A simple logo with a single color represents the confidence of an established business and looks highly professional. Marketo reports that 95% of the top hundred brands use only one or two colors in their logo.
Furthermore, first-time viewers judge your business’s credibility using the aesthetical outlook. If it appears that you are trying too hard to impress with a convoluted design, it is an immediate turn-off. According to logo design valley, complex logos are also amongst the substandard logo designs that you should avoid at all costs since it translates negatively on your brand.
- Hard to counterfeit
You put in a lot of hard work, dedication, and long hours to build a brand from the ground. You also spend time and money to create a distinctive logo that is exclusive to your brand. The last thing you want is for an imposter to make a few subtle changes to your design and call it their own.
When a company appropriates your logo, it aims to trick your followers and customers into buying from them and take a share of your profits and popularity. Conversely, a dead-simple logo without any overt decorative elements is tough to adapt and alter. Even the subtlest of changes are immediately noticeable, leaving no room for copying.
Final thoughts
Simplicity is one of the defining qualities of a successful logo. It clearly expresses your business’s purpose with brevity. It is memorable, resourceful, and easy to remember, making it far more effective than a complex logo. Finally, it authenticates credibility, prompts the necessary emotions, and evades appropriation.
Author Bio
Erica Silva
Erica Silva is a blogger who loves to discover and explore the world around her. She writes on everything from marketing to technology. She enjoys sharing her discoveries and experiences with readers and believes her blogs can make the world a better place.
Find her on Twitter: @ericadsilva1
