It happens to all of us – that logo you spent hours, days, weeks working on with a graphic designer turned out beautiful. You slapped it on all your letterhead, business cards, signage, websites and other promotional materials. And once it was out in the open, you realized, “Maybe it’s not quite right.”
Now what?
Redesigning anything – whether it’s a website, a logo or an entire rebranding of the company – is costly, since it involves redoing all your marketing collateral. It’s not a decision to be made lightly because you’re bored. But there are times when a logo change is worth the investment.
It’s old. There something to be said for the Coca-Cola logo not evolving as much as Pepsi throughout their rivalry-fueled existence. It’s a classic and instantly recognizable. But you’re not Coke. A glance at Pepsi throughout the years shows that the soft drink company updated its logo to keep with the times – the bottlecap of the ’50s symbolized soda shops and sharing a bottle with a date. The logo of the 1970s reminds me of the Harlem Globetrotters in their heyday. And the 2008 redesign coincided with the similarly themed Barack Obama presidential campaign.
It’s complicated. The Apple logo of today is a familiar one – everyone recognizes that glowing blue fruit. But have you ever seen the original Apple logo? The first time I saw it, it took me a while to realize it’s a scene featuring Isaac Newton beneath an apple tree. It was replaced quite swiftly with the rainbow “bitten” apple and has kept the same shape since, with just the colors changing throughout the years.
You need press. Sometimes nothing is wrong – your business is doing fine, your logo is fine, everything is … fine. But you could use a boost. When companies make changes, they send out press releases, and a logo redesign is a change. It allows you to remind customers and potential new ones that you’re around and keeping busy. Investing in the time and money to change your logo can earn you a return on investment (ROI) for your efforts in the form of media coverage.
The company changed. IBM’s first logo in 1924 stated its full name: International Business Machines. But in 1947, the logo was shortened to the acronym, focusing on the business as a whole rather than “machines.” After all, this is a company that does more than make machines – it’s invented new technologies and offers services and consulting. Take a look at your logo – does it symbolize what you do?
Jennifer Moline writes about graphic design, small business and technology, for the PsPrint Design & Printing Blog. Follow online printing company PsPrint on Twitter and Facebook.
IBM is an initialism. http://www.lyberty.com/encyc/articles/abbr.html
Good article though.
Great article and insight. There is a scad of reasons for changing a business logo. Most often in my business of altering logos for clients the biggest reason is that the logo they have was created before personal computers got good and sophisticated. So they have maybe one version of their logo in a low resolution. So they have us redraw the logo in high res and then while we are at it we adjust the colors, fonts, layout, etc.. as needed.
Hi Jennifer: I would proceed with caution though as changing your logo often times would mean that you might accidentally undo what your brand has come to mean in the long run. While I agree that you would need to put out a new logo for all the reasons above, most of the time it might not be worth it at all.