Logo design: from logo concept to corporate image including everything about your branding

Useful definitions:

Logo or Logotype

Recognizable and distinctive graphic design, stylized name, unique symbol, or other similar for the identification of an organization. It will be used on all advertisements, communications, literature, products, stationery, and vehicles. Not to be confused with a brand, which identifies a product or a family of products. An important feature of the effective logo is readability.

Mark

It is a sign or symbol consisting of combinations of letters, writings, numbers, painted symbols (also called pictorial), also taken from or coming from ancient prints, stamps, icons to summarize the corporate image and the brand image.
In the case of graphic mark it is characterized by appropriate colors and often combined with writings bearing the name of the Company, product, or service.
Contrary to what is often imagined, the mark can also be a sound.

One thing that I have metabolized over many years of experience in the area of logo design, is that when a logo or mark is commissioned, those who advance the request rarely know exactly what they are searching for and often do not understand how to choose the creative team that they will have to deal with.

I mean, that there is a lot of confusion about the “logo designer”, especially since the widespread use of digital graphics softwares and maybe their too easy availability has shifted attention to the fact of getting something pretty in a budget, against the cost of time and skills, which involves the true path of graphic design and study of a mark or logo.

Not by chance, the design of the logo or brand, in ancient times was made entirely by hand, from the draft to the finished design. By now, most of the graphic designers no longer start with hand drawing.
However, having some notions of creative and technical drawing is an excellent starting point for designing original letters or graphic elements from scratch.
This would be useful for example, in order to create a Logo or Brand not just using existing characters (fonts), but having very original letters!

Design by hand of a logotype, involves the knowledge of technical design and precise rules: when I speak of hand drawing I do not mean the pictographic mark, characterized by the graphic-symbolic element invented by the creative, but a meticulous graphic project realized by hand, through which the letters, the characters that will constitute our logo, take shape. Subsequently, the hand drawing is scanned and therefore subject to vector reconstruction.

Symbolism, geometry, balance between spaces and thickness of the characters, when possible a draft hand draw…
My starting point for logo design is always a deep analysis of competitors image and targets of Customer mixed with genuine creativity and originality.

In my opinion the best result about logo design, beside theoretical knowledge and IT skills, come always from intuitions and perceptions…

Brand Image and Brand Reputation: why brand image has become so important to increase the sales and as added value of any business.

BRAND IMAGE, represents the set of feelings that the image of your business, raises at the eyes of the consumer.

A sort of collection of information that identify you to the user’s eyes and that our brain processes and gives us in form of sensations, such as: “beautiful”, “nice”, “that’s what I look for”, “I do not care”…
To simplify the concept I make an example: the mark of “FERRARI” raises ideas of power, elegance, the car of the pipe dream. The mark of “FIAT” certainly guarantees a good car and arouses feelings less fanciful but practical.

Each consumer choice is dictated primarily by the sight sensations received by the image of the product, or by the way it is promoted. Therefore it is crucial for a company, make it immediately attractive and competitive thanks to a proper study of its brand image.

Even if the word brand means in itself logo or mark, Brand Image is not absolutely only a “concept” or something “esoteric” merely represented by a beautiful logo…

Brand image It is a very important set of business elements and sensations that takes form through various communication and marketing tools and activities and – last but not least – the general Brand Reputation.
If the business has not a strong reputation, building a powerful Brand Image will be almost impossible or simply useless!

Therefore, Brand Image in the widest meaning of it, comes from a strategic combination of Brand Identity (tools) and Brand Reputation (opinions and sensations already expressed by users and sector media).

Brand Reputation: much before to start to work about visual proposal or marketing strategies, we should take a very close look at it!

We should never forget about the Brand Reputation. It should be the first thing that we check out about a business before to start to work on Brand Image..

Before to create design projects or before to think about the digital content strategy we should investigate by researching the answers of so many questions: Does this business own a strong Brand Reputation? In which areas? On the basis of what? What does the user/consumer think about the service or products released by this business? What do think the employees and manpower working for them? Do the existing online and offline opinions  represent the real target of the Company? This consumers target, was already reached or not yet? And so on…

If you think about it for a moment, in everything that we buy during our day living, we realize that we trust certain brands, we always do the shopping in the same supermarket, food taken individually are precisely the same brand etc.. The examples also extend to material goods: auto, moto, appliances. How many of you use only MAC or PC? And so on…

This is the effect of Brand Image on consumers. It would have to say that we are “victims” (as consumers) of the Brands. But in term of marketing success, this is precisely what a Company must obtain from a massive and effective modern marketing campaign (digital marketing and conventional marketing where needed).

At a certain point, the marketing campaign will end, but the Brand Image will stay!
The consumer should be loyal and continuously stimulated.
He should feel satisfied after giving confidence to purchase a product.

Sure The BRAND IMAGE must represent all the good that is in the Company name.

All best marketing experts agree to say that the Era of fake clicks and fake images is gone. The buyer is stimulated to buy from a made up of sensations. Many little things that are closely related to positive emotional stimuli.

This is why the Brand Image has become so important to the sale.

In the purchase journey, the decision of buying is given by psychic factors, which the marketer working for the brand should be able to positively stimulated with right information and communication techniques well targeted.

The speed of information exchange is very high and compared to the whole world, there are no longer any barriers that enclose a single product in its own country.
The Modern Companies that want to record a real increase of their revenues, should be adequately available with their brand and product online.
We realize that it is a radical change for businesses that have a significant historic built on direct relationships, handshakes and face-to-face relationships. But without these above operations, and this new awareness, those businesses are bound to a closed market without real possibilities of expansion…

The new frontier of electronic commerce, offers the opportunity to make known a brand around the world. It would be a shame and a waste of potential, do not take advantage of this important communication tool.