I want to make my own logo (part I)
Each product that comes onto the market, each service that is promoted, needs an identity. An identity is made up of several elements, but they can be reduced to just three: a name, a logo and a slogan.
The commercial name must be adapted to function correctly in the geographical area that it will cover, once it is released on the market. It should be short, easy to pronounce, and not include characters that are difficult to type from a mobile device.
The slogan must be a short phrase, but very well thought out and with a memorable message. This phrase can contain its dose of humor, good sense or lifehack. But, the most important thing is that the message reaches and promotes an action in the behavior of the prospect (person who is not our client yet).
Both the commercial name and the slogan are things that we can think of ourselves from our own office or even from the comfort of our home, surrounded by family or friends.
Brainstorming can bring many options to the table. Some will not be successful at all, most do not have that potential to succeed, but... there may be one that meets all the requirements. This Eureka moment is great! You should try it! Even if it is as a simple mental exercise on an imaginary product or service.
The logo...
Its mere name begins to cause problems. And the main problem is that we do not agree on what to call it. By the way (BTW), I like to call it like this: logo. That's it! No more information than that. However, to understand what it is called, one would have to search a bit in its history.
Are you ready for a flashback? Okay, here we go...
Back in ancient times, royal people used to have their own logos, in the form of royal coats of arms. These were used to seal the written communications of these personalities in their kingdom.
Much later, the printing press began to serve as a means of promotion and was used by merchants to distribute their brand message in those publications. Now… do you know what the trademarks looked like on those printouts? Sorry to disappoint you, but... they looked like a simple name within a paragraph. Something not very attractive to prospects or customers.
So, they tried to make the trademark stand out from the rest of the text in that paragraph. To do this, they used what they had: bold characters, italics, "quotation marks", etc. The brand stood out on the paragraph, but… it didn't look very corporate. After all, the paragraph was written in a serif font (with sticks at the ends, much like the Times New Roman font that we all know today).
Another solution was to change the “type”. But what is a type? Let us remember that, at that time, there were no computers and a circulation of 1000 copies of a magazine, typing each one, was impossible. In printing presses, each letter was cast in a little lead box (if you've seen a typewriter, you might see a version of these little boxes at the tip of the lever that imprints the letters on the paper).
Until now, our paragraph would be printed in Times New Roman and our business name could appear in Arial, Verdana or Roboto (so you can compare what I'm telling you). That is, we could switch between fonts (serif and sans serif). Thus, revealing these two large groups, which classify most modern letters (Serif and Sans serif. Sans, means "without" and Serif means "sticks, on the corner of the letter").
It seemed that everything was resolved. But, it wasn't like that. Disgruntled customers of these printers wanted their brand to look just like it did in real life. The printers responded, creating a single box, which occupied several characters in itself and allowed the brand to come out as they needed it. Thus, began the logo creation and printing service for the mass reproduction of advertising.
I'm pretty sure that there is a question spinning around in your head. And that is...
Why have I heard a logo called: logotype, isologo, isotype, imagotype?
Well... we will leave this for a second part of the series: “I want to make my own logo”.
Thank you very much for your reading. I hope you found it interesting and learned something new today. Please, take care! See you around!
I learned something today from your article sir and that's the story back in ancient times. The two fonts you've mention sir, the "Times New Roman" and the "Arial" are mostly we used if we were making a paragraph. If I will have a report, I use mostly the Times New Roman sir.