By Jim Knake

The right logo for your business is important. A logo is instant branding and is one of the first things people see about your business. Being in the advertising business for as long as I have, you see a lot of good a lot of  bad. Just take a drive around your neighborhood and look at the signs business owners put up. What does it tell you about what they do? Does it have to tell you anything? Which ones do you like and which ones are just plain terrible.

There are two schools of thought out there. One is that your logo needs to convey what you do and the other is that is must be eye catching. In my opinion, both are correct! It just depends on what it is that you do. For example, If you are trying to get your business known worldwide, You may just want an image, Pepsi has that. It is simple and non descript. Don’t be married to the logo forever, The Pepsi logo changes over time, you may want to change with the times as well. What looked good in 1978 may look really terrible in 2010. If you are a more local company, you don’t need that big branding symbol, but you do need something that shows you are a legitimate company. I have seen many logos that scream, “My 12 year old son designed it” or “I liked this font and did it in Publisher”. Ugh!!! That’s all well and good if you are the only store with your services in town, but if you have any competition, you need to look more professional.

One of the most important things is to be original, don’t take what someone else has done and copy it and also don’t use fonts straight out of the computer font library, tweak them so it is original to you and please, please, please do not use Brush Script or Zapf Chancery or I will come find you and remove them from your hard drive.

Thank you… This has been a public service announcement from Rooks Advertising.

Creative without strategy is called ‘art.’ Creative with strategy is called ‘advertising.’ – Jef I. Richards