Why you shouldn’t try to squeeze too much into a logo

“Wow, that’s really clever!”

An exclamation every business owner (and their respective graphic designer) wants to hear when others describe their business branding. A great deal of consideration and careful planning goes into creating a brandmark; including getting just the right mix of form and colour, all in an effort to create a truly memorable piece.

However, in an added push to make a logo design truly unique, it can be tempting to ‘force’ parts of the brandmark into positions that weren’t originally intended. Adding unnecessary elements will generally unbalance the logo, rendering the final design somewhat illogical and impractical. We call this ‘design for design’s sake’. The logo needs to serve a purpose, and serve it well.

We once had a client request a logo of South Australia with several icons of various townships within the map… yes, this was going to be a bit of a squeeze. The original idea had merit… but the application for this purpose was never going be successful. We suggested an alternate mark that better summed up his state-based travel company, while we used the ‘map suggestion’ in other parts of the branding.

In the wise words of an old lecturer of Visual Communications at the University of South Australia (which a majority of the Argon staff attended, by the way): “A design is not finished when nothing more can be added, it is finished when you cannot take anything away.”

Once you’ve finally got your eye-catching logo to a point that ticks all the aesthetic and conceptual boxes, it’s time to start working on the rest of your brand.