Is a logo preponderant or marginal for Brands and firms' strategies ?
Logos during XIXe and XXe centuries normally represented often metaphorically the firms' activity. The firm was national, its market sector was clearly defined and the range of its products or services was not vast. Since the second part of the XXe century the firms have become international and they sometimes regroup. They sell a variety of products and services. Since this time there is a struggle in the companies among the culture of products and services with the identity ot the Brand. These reasons explain why it has become difficult to identify by a graphic sign the Brand.
The logo occupies visual space, this is for most Brands a possibility to talk about themselves in different contexts. But, we shouldn't forget that many firms prefer to avoid any negative buzz connected to their activities. Whatever, communication extends behind the logotype. In firms, it is conjugated by Departments, products, professional abilities, corporate statements... In different cases, it is connected to text, images and sounds that drive their proper meanings. In the publics' eyes, the Logo meets a multicultural world with an enlarged audience made by media echoes.
The firm that creates a new logo conmmits itself to answer new goals that it defines itself. That's an opportunity for a firm to communicate with their clients and to remind them that they share the same values. The publishing date of the logo, states the move forward. That's a point of reference for clients-users and for firms.
When to create or modify a logo ?
Creating or modifing a logo are justified in these cases:
- changing the name of the company
- to set up a new firm
- to change strategy
- to merge firms
- the rejection by the public of the Brand image of the company (scandal)
- opening the market to the competition
- etc.
However we can note that we can modify the "visual identity" of a company without changing its logo by just working on visuals (framing, chromie, angle, models...), typography, vocabulary, tone, colours...
The client, the designer, the employees and the public
The client: a public state or a private firm that decides to obtain a sign to represent itself to the public.
The designer: an agency, a free-lancer, anyone...
Employees: those who work for the company and bring the logo to the public. Companies should try to get them involved in the process that will develop their pride and get them to adhere to the companies plan.
Public: everyone that is exposed to the logo.
Publics in touch with the logo come from different cultures and are influenced by multiple preoccupations. The differences of perceptions, interpretations and judgments of each actor stresses the differences between the identity imagined by the one who commissions the work, the designer and the reception by public. Each personal projection is subjective. It's one of the reasons why the logo is sustained by explanations about the drawing and the Brand's values when it's published. Given that, we can't prevent signs from changing with trend's values and taking on a life of their own. It's for defining and evaluating public projections towards these signs and their values that tests are done on the public, consumers, citizens...
How to evaluate a logo ?
How to evaluate this shape, this background that rises to the surface as we say commonly. We can answer pragmatically to that question in considering that its use will evaluate and validate its success. But, we can also think about the criteria that serve to evaluate the logo which oblige us to define:
– its status and the goals for it
– the authorities that are the best to discuss and give their opinion.
If these questions don't seem impossible to answer, it's without thinking about "the nebula of belief, the projections that suits creation, reception and usage" that mystify reality. These behaviours reveal the differences that exist between the explicit demand and the implicite discourse. That can explain incoherence that we can encounter in the logo's choice by the headquarters that choose from their personal taste.
Follow here, a proposition of procedure with some technical points:
• Description exposed of the public who will be targeted by the logo
• Study of signs by the competition
• Survey of feedback by employees about the Brand image of their entreprise
• Interview with public that encounters the Brand
• Drawing up of a strategic and technical book of duties
• Drafting the publications of the logo that describes, motivates and assimilates the signs used for the new values and new goals that the firm is anticipating
• Adaptation of the Block mark to the range products and services, cultures, continents, countries...
• Definition of the logo's technical characteristics which allow it to be visible and readable in all publishable conditions
• Verifying that the logo illustration, the Brand's name, the catch phrase-tagline-motto are understood the same way universally
• Recognition test of the old and new logo to evaluate its familiarity
• Evaluation of societal, economic and organizational values generated by the logo (managerial criteria).
A symbol for futur ethnologists
The logo reflects sociological and technological evolution of our civilization. It is one of the representations that ethnologists, historians, sociologists who study our societies will pay attention to.
To continue these considerations, read Philippe Quinton.
