Read & Respond

Summary

The seven ingredients of your signature dish

We’ve talked about the elements that should be part of your iconic designs, and we’ve looked at a few worthy examples to back them up. How memorable are these principles for you now? Since they’re not as easy to remember as a minimal black-and-white design, it might help to do a quick review:

Keep it simple.
The simplest solution is often the most effective. Why? Because a simple logo helps meet most of the other requirements of iconic design.

Make it relevant.
Any logo you design must be appropriate for the business it identifies. For example, as much as you might want to use a witty design that makes everyone smile, that’s hardly an ideal approach for the local crematorium.

Incorporate tradition.
Trends come and go like the wind. With visual identities, the last thing you want is to invest a significant amount of your time and your clients’ money in design directions that look dated within a year or two.

Aim for distinction.
Begin by focusing on a design that is recognizable — so recognizable, in fact, that just its shape or outline gives it away. Commit to memory. Quite often, one quick glance is all the time you get to make an impression. You want your viewers’ experience to be such that what you’ve designed is remembered the instant they see it the next time.

Think small.
Your logo should ideally work at a minimum of around one inch in size without loss of detail so that it can be put to use for many different applications.

Focus on one thing.
Incorporate just one feature to help your designs stand out. That’s it. Just one. Not two, three, or four.

Remember that rules are made to be broken

By sticking to the rules for creating iconic designs, you stand a greater chance of delivering timeless and enduring logos that impress and excite your clients. But can you do more? And do you always need to play by the book? Keep in mind that rules can always be broken. It’s up to you to tread new paths in your attempts to create designs that are a cut above the rest. Whether your results are successful is another matter but you’ll learn so much more and so much faster when any potential mistakes are yours rather than someone else’s.