Logo, Colors and First Impressions

Of all the marketing material a business ever produces, the logo is the most underestimated, second only to the website. I see it constantly. An owner will spend real money on a truck and then put a logo on it that a friend made as a favor, in colors nobody chose, in a shape that means nothing. The truck now spends the next five years broadcasting that decision to everyone at every red light.

Your logo is more often than not the first impression, and it is the foundation of everything else you print or post. It will control the color scheme of your marketing material, the look of your business card, your website and your signage. Get it right and every later decision gets easier. Get it wrong and you will be fighting it for years.

Color choice

Every color is interpreted differently and triggers a different response. That is habit. People have been trained by every brand they have ever seen. Think of the colors of fast food, of banks, of hospitals, of luxury goods, and notice how consistent each category is. Your customer carries those associations into the first glance at your logo whether you like it or not.

So the question to ask is “what does this color say to my avatar, and does it match my internal brand?” Whether you like it comes last. In my book, the chef who wanted a high-end restaurant was given a dark blue as the foundation, and everything from the menu cover to the tablecloths followed from that one choice. His first version, with red chairs, a green logo, blue menus and a yellow-on-purple sign, had no foundation at all. Each piece was a separate opinion.

Pick one main color and one or two supporting colors, write down the exact values, and use nothing else. The discipline is more important than the particular shade.

Feel of the logo

Many logos are metaphorical. They use a well-known object to show what the business means: a bell, a mountain, a key, a house. Often it is simply a matter of using a familiar shape that people already connect with. The feel is the emotional read a person gets in the first half-second: solid or playful, old-fashioned or modern, expensive or cheap, local or corporate.

Here is the distinction that saves a lot of arguments with designers. Clever is not the same as clear. A logo that hides three meanings in a shape that takes a minute to decode is clever. A logo that a homeowner reads correctly from a moving truck is clear. You want clear. Ask yourself what feeling your avatar needs in order to call you, and choose shapes that give them that feeling without explanation.

Initial impression

What is the first impression of the logo? This matters because, many times, it is the first impression people get of your business, period. Before the website loads, before you answer the phone, before they see your work, they see the mark.

Test it the way a customer meets it. Shrink it to the size of a phone icon. Print it in black and white. Put it on a photo of your truck and stand thirty feet away. Show it to someone for two seconds and ask what kind of company that is and what they probably charge. If their answer does not match your vision, the logo is telling the wrong story, and it will tell it thousands of times.

Name or no name

Sometimes having your company name as part of the logo is a good idea; at other times you want to separate them. If the name already says what you do and who you are for, let the name be the logo, with a simple mark beside it. If the name is a surname or an abstract word, the mark and a short tagline have to carry the explanation. And plan for both versions: a full logo with the name for the truck and the website, and a small mark without it for the places where the name will not fit.

Briefing a designer

Whether you hire a designer or work through an online service, the result is only as good as the brief. Give them your one-page internal brand, your avatar biography, the one idea you want to own from the car brands lesson, and three or four logos from other industries that feel the way you want to feel. Tell them where it will live: truck, shirt, sign, phone screen. Ask for the color values and for versions in full color, one color and black and white. Ask for the editable vector files too, and get it in writing that the logo is yours, because a cheap logo that turns out to be a template can cost you a rebrand. The book shows a collection of logos from around the world that were all thought through as part of an overall brand strategy. That is the standard: a logo that came from a strategy, not from a favor.

Run the two-second test

Run the initial-impression test on your current logo this week with three people who do not know your business: show it for two seconds, then ask “what kind of company is this and what do they charge?” Write their answers next to your vision. If they match, keep the logo and write down your exact colors. If they do not, write the designer brief described above before you spend another dollar on anything that carries the logo.

What it costs

The brief and the test take a few hours and both are free. A designer will typically take one to three weeks and cost anywhere from a couple of hundred dollars through an online service to a few thousand for someone who builds the whole color and type system with you. Whatever you spend, it is far less than redoing a truck wrap because the logo was wrong.