Logo Design Lesson #3: Don’t Confuse Logo and Brand

3 Different Ways of Looking at the Logo Vs Brand Confusion

1. The Iceberg Principle in Logo Design :

 Logo Design is the tip of the iceberg. This is Hemingway’s famous theory of writing. In short, Ernest Hemingway’s minimalist writing style focused on surface elements without explicitly discussing underlying themes. Hemingway famously said that the deeper meaning of a story should shine through implicitly. You don’t have to literally list all the problems between two people, for example. You easily convey all that using a few lines of curt dialogue.
Lesson:  The customer’s complete experience with your business is 90% of the iceberg. That is your brand.

2. UI (User Interface) and UX (User Experience):

Let’s take Amazon.com for example. The look of the product landing page, placement of the “Buy” button…all that is UI. The whole customer flow on the website and right up till the delivery to your doorstep.
Lesson: Your logo design is the very basic part of the whole UI of your business. Your brand is the full UX – you get the idea.

3. Brand, Brand Identity and Branding:

Your brand is what your customers think of you. Brand identity is all the ‘touchable’ manifestations of your business – logo, colours, typography and voice/tone (some businesses like to maintain an informal/cheery voice, others come off as the Federal Government). Branding is all the things you do to shape customers’ perceptions of your company.

What is a Logo?

A logo is a very important component of your business’s brand identity (see above segment). It is your business’s signature. It helps your business with instant recall, recognition, and reputation. Generally seen as a graphic or typographic mark, a logo design is also known as a mark, brand mark, trademark, wordmark, logotype, symbol, or brand icon.

How is a Logo design Different from the Brand?

As we saw above, your brand is what your customers think of you. It covers everything and everywhere a customer comes across your – webpage, shopping cart, retail store, product delivery, email sign up form, returns, customer inquiry forms, IVRs, customer care centre, product/service quality, after-sale service and support, public relations, advertisements, infomercials…even the music used in your ads. Branding is every touchpoint your business has with your customers.

Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com says this about Brand:

“Your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room.”

What do I do with My Logo design and Brand?

Here’s how Seth Godin, who has written many books on marketing, summarises the logo vs brand debate: https://seths.blog/2015/01/logo-vs-brand/
Spend 10,000 times as much time and money on your brand as you spend on your logo.
…Nike spent $250 to buy a swoosh. Probably a little more than they needed to. But the Nike brand, the sum total of what we think and believe and feel about what this company makes–it’s now worth billions.
Lesson: In the logo vs brand debate, never mistake the logo for the forest.

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