Menu
Having a good logo is really important for your business as it is the first thing that the consumer sees about your brand and it will depend on how the audience perceives your brand as logos are a visual interpretation of what is your brand about and what makes it unique, that is why is important to maintain a strong brand identity always and avoid looking outdated.
Also, businesses tend to grow and evolve over years, you might start a company with two friends some years ago and now have multiple shops, and your brand values and message have changed, these changes are important to display on your logo to maintain a cohesive brand.
This article will help you know when it’s time to give your brand a fresh look and how to do a successful rebrand that connects with your audience, let’s start with the main reasons to make a logo redesign.
Advertisment
It might be scary to start a redesign logo process for your business at the beginning, as it is a complex process, but the results can be very positive to your business as the new logo can help you connect with a new audience, or give a new look to your brand.
Redesign a brand logo is not necessary for all brands and it’s not an easy decision to make as it requires studying your brand carefully, and the first step is to identify what is wrong with your current logo, that is why here I show you 6 reasons to consider a logo redesign and if your business meets one or more of them, it might be a good idea to invest on a logo redesign to keep your business successful in the long-term.
If you are facing a that your target audience has changed and your need to attract a different group of people like younger consumers and your current brand identity is not connecting with this new audience it might be the time to give your brand a fresh look by having in mind your new audience to connect with them better.
Connecting with your customers is really important for business and investing in a new logo having in mind them can help your new audience to connect with your brand and build brand loyalty.
Your business might be operating for many years successfully, but there are always new brands and businesses coming up with new ideas and modern looks, and you start seeing that your business is losing clients as they prefer the new alternatives.
To avoid this to happen you should release a redesigned logo and branding that reflects that your brand is modern and up-to-date to show your customers that you are ready to modernize and continue evolving your business to stay always on the top.
Advertisment
Has your business grown by adding a completely new line of products, and innovative services, opening more shops in different locations, or just expanding your company to different markets? if so, you should consider a logo redesign to reflect these new changes your company had.
This reason might be the most obvious one, but if you don’t remember when your brand logo was made and you feel that it’s getting outdated you need to consider a logo redesign and bring your brand logo to a modern era with a fresh design to avoid that viewers associate your brand with an outdated company.
Advertisment
Is your brand logo look good in an Instagram profile picture or it’s readable from the screen of a phone? if your answer is no, then you definitely need a logo redesign as marketing channels have changed a lot over the years and your brand logo should be prepared to be shown on small screens and marketing campaigns on Instagram, YouTube, or Facebook.
You might start your business alone working in your garage, but now you have multiple shops, employees, and a successful company, and this means that your brand values or mission may have changed over the years and you should think about a logo redesign to reflect these important changes in your business.
It might be that your brand needs a fresh look to maintain it up to date, but instead of doing a complete logo redesign, your brand can do a logo refresh instead, which is a less dramatic option, but what is the difference between a logo redesign and a logo refresh?
Logo refresh as the name suggests is maintaining your current logo and giving it a makeover to look modern and more appealing to your target audience, you can use the core elements of your logo and adjust colors, tweak fonts, change or remove taglines, reorganize shapes or simplify your logo.
On other hand, logo redesign is a more complex process as it involves starting from scratch and redoing your entire brand message to reflect in your new brand logo, at the end of this process you can change everything about your logo like messaging, values, color scheme, your company’s name, typography, and shapes.
Advertisment
A redesign process it’s not only removing your old logo and starting from scratch with the whole research, is more about knowing your brand and how it has changed over the years and reflecting that in your new logo.
Before redesigning your logo you should check if you can go a logo refresh as we saw early on this post and give a new look to your current logo, as this option is less dramatic as the changes made will be minimal, but in some cases, this option is not enough and your brand might need a full redesign process, but before jumping on it, you should ask yourself these 3 questions.
Advertisment
You can check the previous 6 reasons to make a logo redesign in this post and identify what is not working with your current logo and see if it needs a new look, but if your reason to make a redesign is just “because my current logo doesn’t work” is not enough, as before solving a problem, you need to identify the problem.
Before creating a completely new logo for your business from scratch take a look at which elements you can maintain from your original logo like type style, symbol, or colors, choose those elements that better represent your business and try to keep them with a new feel and look to maintain the essence of your business with a modern feeling.
In this step, you can try to follow the minimalist principle of “function over visual” and remove extra elements only maintaining functional elements that reflect oyur business.
Many failed rebranding projects became fails due to the strong connection of their customer base with their previous logo, and by completely changing their logo their customers felt disconnected from the new brand, so keep this in mind and be careful with it.
To know how a dramatic rebrand will affect your customer base, you can ask them and take time to understand what are your main objectives with this process, if you want to attract a completely new target audience you can go for a complete overhaul, but if you want to maintain your established customer base, you can go by a logo refresh instead and avoid dramatic changes.
Mastercard logo redesign is a clear example of good logo refresh, as they maintain the core elements of their old logo like the characteristic circular shapes, and simplified the overall logo by toning down the color palette and connecting the two circles by overlapping them, also they moved the name from the center and simplified the font and how they have a clean and good looking logo.
Burger King’s logo redesign is a good example of a complete redesign project, as they completely changed their brand logo and used two design trends very well, minimalism and nostalgia, removing all multicolor elements to remove the synthetic and artificial feeling and instead they used a more realistic color palette that gives a more tasty feeling.
With the increasing popularity of electric cars and geometric shapes in graphic design, Renault make a complete overhaul of their logo with more simplified shapes and lines that symbolize car wheels and removed all the effects from the old logo to obtain a clean logo, also they maintained the original symbol to connect with the old logo and make the change less dramatic.
PayPal’s logo redesign is a good example of the reason that their old logo get outdated and not mobile friendly they wanted to be prepared for smartphones which is why they redesign their logo in 2014 by removing extra elements and giving a more minimalist and clean look overall becoming and App Icon friendly logo.
Advertisment
Redesign sports logos is always a difficult task as usually their fan base are highly attached to their old logo, and Leeds United is a clear example of what not to do to redesign a football logo, as they completely remove their old logo and instead presented a new logo that has any connection with the club history and the overall look seemed as a template and generic logo.
Remember when I said that a good way to redesign your logo is to remove decorative elements that don’t have any function?, well, Capital One redesign made the complete opposite and added non-sense elements like a swoosh or added more words to the logo, also the placement of elements is a complete mess.
One reason to make a logo redesign is to differentiate your brand from your competitors and make it look unique and more appealing, and the Gap redesign did the opposite, by changing the logo typography to Helvetica which is an overused font and used by their main competitor American Apparel and what is the gradient square? overall this logo looks null and generic, fortunately, they went back to the previous logo six days after.
If we talk about Oxford Dictioniers we expect to see a serious and classy brand logo, which they had, but they wanted to attract a younger audience so they redesign their logo to give a modern feeling losing its classy style, but the worst, is that their new logo is very similar to a well-known brand like Beats by Dre.
Advertisment
A logo redesign project is a complex process that should be made with a lot of research and carefully developed, but a good starting point is to identify the problems your current logo has to be able to fix them with a logo refreshing or complete logo overhaul.
If your business meets some of the reasons shown in this article and you feel that it’s time to give a new look to your company you can send me an email and start working on giving your brand a fresh look.
Pin it for later!
Pin it for later!
If you found this post useful you might like to read these post about Graphic Design Inspiration.
Advertisment
Written by
If you like this post share it on your social media!
Advertisment
Want to make your Business Grow with Creative design?
Advertisment
Advertisment
Advertisment
