“Wait, Luke! I thought you were a brand-centric agency? What kind of branding company doesn’t design logos?”
Good question, thanks for asking!
In a world where firing up Canva takes 10 seconds and everybody fancies themselves a designer, the word “logo” has become synonymous with what effectively amounts to an overpriced sticker for your company.
People don’t understand how important a logo is. If your company was Zooey Deschanel, your logo would be her eyes. Look at this picture of her that is quite literally plugging hair extensions.
Did you look at her hair first? Did you even look at her hair? Of course not. Because you got stuck looking through the windows to her soul.
You get my point. Zooey is a complex individual whose face conveys a lot of different things, but her eyes are a focal point for communication. Your logo conveys a lot of different things, too. In fact, when it conveys your brand effectively, it becomes more than a logo. It becomes a brand mark. Those are what we do design.
Brand marks and their value
A brand mark takes time, effort, experience, and expertise to do correctly. If you have 10 minutes, you can read about our branding process here.
You have to assign meaning to a logo, but a brand mark that has been executed proficiently inherently conveys meaning. Using nuance in typography, positioning, illustration, colour, and more, a brand mark will be able to communicate your brand through a visual language of nuance that our brains can interpret both subconsciously as well as consciously.
Perhaps it will convey how your brand feels (Nike).
Maybe it’ll convey what it sells (Burger King).
It might even just conjure up some curiosity or history (Starbucks).
I’ve admitted before that in the world of the internet and business, unicorns exist. You might get lucky on Fiverr or 99designs, but understand that if that happens for you, you just won the lottery. These types of sites have devalued branding significantly over the past decade.
Let me explain why you get what you pay for on these sites: these “designers” (and yes, while there are legitimately experienced/educated professional graphic designers on these sites too, we are here to discuss the rule, not the exceptions) need to get paid for between 5-20 gigs a day to make ends meet, depending on where in the world they live. Between reading up on the jobs, communicating with the business owners that made them, and working on jobs that they don’t get paid for (this is how many of the contest sites work–you only get paid for your efforts if you “win” the competition), that doesn’t leave a lot of time for the proper creative process.
Do you know what it does leave time for? Stealing. Yep. It’s a harsh word, especially when most of the time they will be using assets and templates they paid for on iStock and the like. But many of them just don’t have the time to create their own ideas. Can you blame them? They only have 10 minutes to work on it, after all! So they look at the brief for a new coffee shop, grab a template online with a few dozen coffee graphics, select their favourite, and pair it with the “Seventh Cup” in Gotham Bold. Boom–send.
That’s a logo nowadays, folks. And we don’t sell those.
If, however, your company needs professionally executed branding, complete with a new, or simply refreshed, brand mark, I’d be happy to meet you at Seventh Cup and answer your most burning questions. Get in touch with us here.
