Consistent Brand Identity

If you’re planning to update your logo, you should consider how involved a project it will be. Every instance of the logo will need to be changed out.

Every letterhead and business card, website and social media, uniform and other apparel, building signage, vehicles; anything and everything where the logo appears will need to be updated. The update could be executed in stages, changing out the logo first where it is seen the most by the public, and getting to internal uses later.

This is why it’s good to settle on one logo and use it everywhere, or at the very least, some version of it with very slight alterations tailored to that application. The logo is your company’s face and identity and it’s how the world recognizes you. Keeping it consistent across all appearances of it, from uniforms to vehicles to your website, promotes an impression of reliability and promotes customer confidence in your company. It’s a subtle thing, but it’s powerful.

There is one instance where multiple versions of your company’s identity may be in order. If you have a logotype or logomark, where the majority of the design is the name of your company, several different versions may be needed. The typography may need to be stacked tall or set in a single line, depending on the space the mark needs to fill. This eliminates the need to reduce the size of the mark so small that it’s barely readable.

A style guide is invaluable to your brand identity and how it is managed, if you rely on outsourced contractors to use your logo in whatever marketing or advertising you’re using. Acting as a user manual for your logo, a style guide describes how the logo should and should not be used. Global companies such as Owens Corning and Mettler Toledo distribute or make available online their style guides to anyone who may be involved in applying their brand identity. This guarantees the logo’s proper use and execution, or at the very least, puts the responsibility on the designer to use the company’s logo properly. Everything from the use of color, to the spacing around the logo, to what not to do with the logo is usually covered.

A good designer will strive to foresee all possible applications for an updated brand, and design it accordingly.