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- How to Include Green Requirements in Meeting Planning RFPs
- Marketing Basics for Interpretive & Heritage Sites and Attractions - Part 2
- Top 10 Best Green Practices for Meeting Planners
- Marketing Basics for Interpretive & Heritage Sites and Attractions
- How to Keep Your Website Interesting and Visitors coming back
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Logo Design and Visual Identity
Apr.20/07 - A logo is a tactic which should be part of a more encompassing public relations strategy known as a visual identity program. A visual identity program consists of research and planning, design and presentation.
In a way, a logo is like any other PR tactic, such as a news conference or a newspaper ad—it is most effective when it is understood as a carefully designed element of a master plan with some clearly defined objectives.
Research and Planning
A visual identity program consists of standardized type faces, a standardized layout for signs, plus guidelines affecting all other means by which an organization expresses itself visually.
The logo may first appear on a letterhead and business cards. This is only a beginning. At some future date the organization might want to present certificates of merit to its employees or members, or awards to people who have helped the organization. The organization might want to produce lapel pins or even tee shirts or tote bags. What about a web page, a video or TV commercial, or a multimedia CD-ROM? All of these current or future projects should be considered before a logo design is undertaken.
A logo design can come as a result of a brainwave by someone intimately involved with an organization, but it can also come from an outside source such as graphic designer or a marketing company. One thing is certain though, the process by which a logo idea is examined, discussed and tested must be a thorough and painstaking one.
Here are a few things that can be done to ensure that the choice of a logo is the correct one.
First of all, there must be a clear idea of what the organization wants to communicate about its corporate culture. This is not as easy to determine as one might first imagine. Even though the organization may have a mission statement, plus a set of goals and objectives, the organization has to have a very clear notion of itself as a distinct individual within a competitive corporate universe. As soon as you involve more than one person in the process of identifying a corporation’s culture or personality, the dimensions of this personality can expand. Sometimes a great deal of negotiation is needed to reach a consensus, sometimes everything just clicks and there is unanimous agreement. At any rate, there has to be a great deal of discussion by many within the organization to begin the process of developing a visual identity.
Once these parameters are determined, the organization can begin to identify some of its key markets and determine how it wishes to be perceived by these markets. It is one thing to know what your logo means, but are your partners, customers and potential customers going to understand the concept?
The process of logo design can be a painstaking one. When design parameters have been reached, there is the next important step—the graphic design and typography.
Design
Every typestyle has a personality. Like people’s personalities, a font’s personality is made up of nature and nurture—of the genetic material that went into the original design, plus the attributes the typestyle took on throughout its lifetime. When choosing type for a logo, these elements must be considered in detail.
First there is the original design, and the brainwave that produces the inspiration. In graphic design, as in art and in language, creativity consists of a bit of invention and a lot of convention. A graphic designer must have a broad understanding of how type has evolved, and how type was used in the past. From this grows an understanding of the personalities of all the fonts that came before. Only when a clear idea of the history of a font is achieved, can the designer turn on the creative mind and begin to employ the font as part of a design for a logo.
Once set down on paper, individual letters may have to be moved around in relation to each other until they achieve a level of aesthetic integrity—until they ‘just look right’. At any rate, there must be a fair amount of mental work that goes into deciding how each element (letter or piece of type) is placed and whether or not it should be altered in any way.
The computer revolution has put tools into everyone’s hands for graphic design. Most computers are sold with some kind of graphic software. Consequently everyone who owns a computer automatically thinks they can be a graphic designer. Unfortunately a little bit of knowledge can be dangerous. Not everyone can be a graphic artist, just as not everyone who operates a pen can call themselves a writer.
What is important to remember is that in graphic design, one must take control of each letter, and be able to manipulate each letter in relationship to itself and to other letters.
Computer software has been designed to place letters according to some pre-determined formulas contained in the logic of the software program. Most graphic software doesn’t give the user very much control. A software program called Adobe Illustrator offers the designer maximum control of typographic and graphic design. In many ways this software is an extension of the skills possessed by artists who worked before the age of computers. Almost anything is possible, and the computer lets the graphic artist generate subtle variations between designs quickly and efficiently. Thanks to Adobe and the original thinking of the people who invented the Macintosh computer, what the graphic artist produces on the computer screen is what ultimately appears on paper (What You See Is What You Get, or WYSIWYG). Today most good computers offer this capability.
What computers can’t do is bring in an understanding of the history of type, of the personalities given to typestyles by living and breathing people, and the many complex elements that go into aesthetic choices about the use and placement of each letter. For this you need a human being with the skills and background of a graphic designer.
Presentation
When a logo design has been chosen and approved by the powers that be within an organization, the next step is to assign some control over the presentation and use of the logo design.
This has become even more pressing with the proliferation of computers and desktop publishing programs. Virtually anyone with a computer can produce acceptable graphic materials, and virtually anyone can scan and copy a logo design, then modify it for use in any number of situations. Each time a logo is misused, or used in a different way than it was intended, its effectiveness is diminished.
Without a measure of control of the use of the design, it may mutate into a hundred different designs, some of which may actually work against the original intentions the organization has set out.
One of the solutions to this is a published manual outlining all possible usage of the logo, and specifying within very well defined parameters the graphic elements of the logo.
The most elemental solution is a commitment by the organization to police the use of the logo with dogged determination, so that every time the logo is used, it must come under the scrutiny of an individual or a committee.
Put all of these elements together: research and planning, design and presentation—and you have a respectable visual identity program.