Company Logo Design

It appears that even Institutes of Higher Learning are not impervious to plagiarizing one another. Pass off someone else’s thesis as your own, and you get kicked out of school. But pass off another school’s logo as your own, then take them to court so they can no longer use it?

The University of Southern California is doing just that to the University of South Carolina.

This story has some of the details of the lawsuit. The University of South Carolina has been around since the turn of the 1900’s, but do a search for ‘USC’ within the almighty Google, and see which school shows up first in the search engine ranking.

This story will be interesting to follow, because it shows:
1. Just because you are using a logo first, does that mean that you are protected from another person stealing it?
2. Even large Universities, with some of the most creative people on the planet, are not immune to copying another large University’s logo.
3. Will popularity as seen in Google’s results, be a factor in deciding who has the right to use the interlocking letters? If consumers confuse one with the other, and it is shown that more people associate the interlocking letters with the California school, will that sway the judges?

We think that they should battle it out in a giant sports/academics tournament. Gamecocks vs. Trojans, winner takes all rights to the logo, and the other school is forced to become a 2-year Junior College in humiliation. Errrrr wait a second, the Snow College Badgers might have something to say about that…

We here at BusinessLogos had thought that we had seen nearly every application of a logo: car wraps, tattoos on boxers, thousand dollar handbags, chocolate cigars etc. But even with over hundreds of thousands of items to place your logo on, somehow they have found a few more.

This raises some interesting discussion as to what future societies will think of our culture when, during an archaeological dig, they find a casket with a Yankees logo emblazoned on the front? We fully agree that a logo can say alot about you as a business, but on your casket the implications are endless.

A coat of arms or family crest seems somewhat more appropriate, but then again, some people love their sports teams like family, and even moreso in some cases. Looks like Nike has a whole new demographic to target.

As most successful business owners will tell you, the customer is always right. In the world of graphic design, the flaw in this phrase is no more easily evident than opening your eyes and observing. There is no customer vs. employee he said/she said, there is no receipt checking, no ‘you gave me the wrong order’. There is the simple visual truth: bad design.

To service customers, designers must concede to what the customer wants, otherwise the customer feels like their input is not valued, or they feel they are not being listened to. Often, regardless of the consequences, the designer will concede to customer demand.

Creating a logo is a very personal process that people want to be a part of. You want to feel like you contributed to your company’s design, I mean after all, you probably had a hand in developing everything else, why should your logo be any different? It should be different, because ART is different, and contrary to popular belief, not everyone is an expert.

Consider this:

Would you ever tell your dentist, “actually doc, I don’t think brushing daily will help…”

Would you ever tell Pavarotti, “hey buddy, nice job, but you were a little flat going into that aria…”

Would you ever tell Mike Tyson, “you know guy, if you turn your hips just a little more, you could probably get more power into that uppercut…”

No one in their right mind would make any of the above comments. Why? Because they are professionals at what they do, and we trust and respect them for their expertise. We all may be professionals at something, and chances are that if you are running your own business, you have the skills requisite to be called a professional.

So why don’t we trust graphic designers? In many cases I have seen, customers will say, “yeah, it’s nice, but change this and that”…even when the designer makes specific recommendations against it.

Why doesn’t the customer value the opinion of the professional designer? Why doesn’t the customer trust and respect their professional advice? The reason is that art is subjective. We are allowed to say what we do and don’t like about it, you cannot do that to your Doctor. That is why design is different from your doctor’s opinion, it is open to different interpretations and everyone has one.

Which of these paintings do you like the best? Which do you like least?

They all sold for over $49 million dollars. Actually the left painting “Still Life with Curtain and Flowered Pitcher” by Cezanne was sold for $60.5 million, the middle painting “Woman Seated in a Garden” by Picasso, was sold for $49.5 million, and the “Portrait of Dr. Gachet” by Van Gogh sold for $82.5 million.

The point is that everyone likes different things when it comes to art, some may hate what others love and that is why we treat design, especially design that becomes so personal a reflection of you and your business, differently.

So with all this in mind, here are some pitfalls that many customers experience when trying to provide too much input on their logo design.
1. Keep it simple.

DO

DON’T

2. Minimize use of colors.

DO

DON’T

3. Taglines are the DEVIL, (especially TWO of them in the same logo)

4. When you hire a professional graphic designer, design is what they do, and they are professionals…make sure they know your likes and dislikes, then ask for their opinion, and trust it.