Even if you don’t quite have a marketing budget somewhere along the lines of Target or Apple, your logo needs to make sense at first glance. It needs to explain what your business is before the viewer gets distracted by a cat video, as they probably have more than one window open ‘multi-tasking’ between Facebook and work.
A recent study shows that the human attention span is now an average of 8 seconds, which is less than a goldfish. It dropped from 12 seconds in 2000, giving us the expectation that our attention spans are only going to continue to get lower as time goes on, especially with the ever-growing amount of media distractions continuing to be so readily accessible.
Knowing this, does your logo make sense without having to explain it?
Simplicity is best and though we may not realize it, we all love a good tagline that explains the business with just a few words.
Take our Buying Time and Virtual Assistants University logos, for instance. We use the title of the company in conjunction with the tagline to explain what it is we offer.
Obviously, the logo can’t encompass everything that we offer, but it gives an idea of what we do in the brief amount of time that one will look at the logo. If we were only ‘Buying Time’ someone may not really understand the brand and get bored and move on.
I’ve had clients who were frustrated with their logo because they were getting feedback that their logo didn’t really make sense, or that it was too complicated. I’ve seen entrepreneurs that use their name only as a logo, but the addition of a short tagline or a small icon to the name would make it a little more clear as to what they do. For instance, a health coach could have an icon of a piece of fruit with their name, or a relationship coach could have a heart icon.
Having an icon, name, and tagline often gives a clear explanation of what is being offered as well as being visually appealing. If the company name and taglines are wordy, then adding an icon may even be too much. Sometimes it takes a bit of maneuvering and playing around with these parts to get it just right. The process of creating a logo is an evolution, usually starting with the entrepreneur and finishing with the designer.
Have a look at your logo. Does it make sense without having to dig for information on your website? Ask a friend if it makes sense to them.
If you are not sure, contact me, V.A. Carrie at service@buyingtimellc.com. I specialize in graphic design and I’m pretty good about giving my honest opinion. 🙂 If it’s already good, I won’t waste your time and money to change it. If it doesn’t make sense, I am happy to work with you to find something that does!
V.A. Carrie — Graphic Designer
Resources: https://naturalsociety.com/attention-span-is-shortening-significantly-by-the-year-but-why/