Designing, Aligning & Timing Company Logos

Both Fortune.com and Kodak announce this week that they are changing their companies’ logos, but for two completely different reasons.

Your company logo creates a visual connection within peoples’ synapses that will always be associated with your brand, but what happens when you want to change direction?

There are numerous ways of going about designing or redesigning your company logo, but creating a logo from scratch can be a daunting challenge. Redesigning a logo takes careful consideration, and knowing when to redesign is based on several factors.

Here we will delve into the basics of logo design solutions for new companies and when to align a redesign.

Logos for new businesses

Nearly every person on the planet knows the Coca-Cola logo. For some it may even cause their mouths to salivate while others may cringe from memories of sugar-gritted teeth and gut-rot from drinking too much.

The power of logos lay in their psychological abilities. They are visual words in graphic form, which penetrate the consciousness of the individual that has a direct experience with them.

When coming up with a logo design, keep in mind that color, shape, and form are not only used for aesthetics, but each have a psychological connection within the mind of the person perceiving them.

You don’t have to be a great artist to create a brilliant logo, but rather you can take your concepts about which colors you would like to use, and which shapes you’d like to include, and plug that information into a designing tool.

DesignMantic is one such tool that allows you to create your own design in about 10 minutes. The platform’s “logo creator” allows you type in your company name and industry, lets you pick from 5,000 different relevant graphics, and then gives you options for changing the color, size, and orientation to fit your needs.

In this way, DesignMantic allows you to customize your logo to fit your vision that you wish to share with the world.

When to align the redesign of your logo

Two great recent examples of big name brands redesigning their logos this week include Fortune.com and Kodak.

Why did Fortune redesign its logo now? As they put it, “every aspect of business is about to change.” Simple enough right?

A good time to redesign your logo is when your business takes a new direction. A fresh logo in this case can be psychologically pleasing as you begin shedding an outdated “image” that is associated with something that no longer represents who or what you are.

According to assistant professor of marketing at the University of Kansas, Noelle Nelson, “A core assumption underlying logo design is that inferences generated from a design are applied to the product or brand to which the logo is attached.”

If the logo no longer matches what it was intended to represent in the first place, it’s a good time to change it.

Kodak is an example of the opposite of Fortune as they chose to go retro on their well-known logo from their glory days before digital cameras.

DesignWeek reported today that “Kodak’s vice president of global brand and creative, Danielle Atkins, says a big part of the inspiration behind the redesign was looking back at the heritage of the brand and the story of Kodak’s founder, George Eastman, ‘weaving his vision back into the brand.'”

In Kodak’s redesign, it was about recapturing the essence of what the company was about when it was founded and the return to those literal “Kodak Moments.”

Whether you’re looking to forge a new image or going back to your humble roots where it all began, it’s time for a logo redesign.