The topic for this blog came up from a meeting I had last week with a prospective client. Very often when our firm is sought out to create a new website or provide brand strategy for a company, we have to raise the all-to-familiar and never comfortable question: what about your logo? And all too often the response is: what about it?

The failure to update a logo is an oversight that can be attributed to several different things. For companies who have had the same logo for years, sometimes even decades, over-exposure is the most likely culprit; after staring employees in the face for that long, an old logo can easily fall off the radar when companies are considering new marketing or branding initiatives. In some cases, it’s not that no one thinks to update the logo but rather that they think this could have adverse affects. Some might worry that even minor updates to a long-standing logo will sever the links in the public’s mind between the brand and its mark and decrease the strength of the brand.

For both of these groups, read on. Truth: a logo is the mark of your company and the design of a logo can go a long way in supporting or thwarting your brand’s presence and the awareness of your brand in the eyes of consumers. However, just because consumers have responded well to a logo in the past doesn’t mean that they will continue to respond favorably to a dated logo over time (what does an old-looking logo say about the company it stands for?) A logo is a symbolic representation of a brand, meant to be recognizable and memorable to your brand’s audience so that when they think of a market niche or service offerings, your firm instantly comes to mind ahead of the rest. Its function as brand resonator makes the logo a vital entity for any consumer-targeted company, but this function can only be fulfilled if a logo is designed thoughtfully for its intended purpose.

That means designing a logo to be recognizable, memorable and in some way indicative of the brand it represents. In many ways, less is more when it comes to logo design – a thoughtful design includes considering how a logo will be translated to print materials, signage and branded apparel and product. For firms that have outdated logos this is especially for you. Try looking at your logo as an outsider; if every element of the design is not meaningful, too much detail will get lost in these mediums and prevent the logo from being as effective as it could. For companies that find themselves with a logo that was never fully thought out, it’s high time that some strategy be applied to create a useful mark. For well established companies that are concerned that a new logo won’t be recognizable, this is an easy problem to remedy: do some PR/marketing around the new logo design before introducing it to your public so that people are expecting the change. This is also an excellent excuse to launch a new website or to create some buzz around an upcoming event.

To learn more, the recent update of Walmart’s logo is a prime example: click here to read about Walmart’s logo redesign project. (Although the design is much more modern than the previous logo, do better than they did about communicating the new logo to your audiences!) To learn more about logo design, visit this blog I found from Smashing Magazine.