The Simpler the Logo, the Better. And Leave it Alone

When a consumer watches a Youtube video and an advertisement suddenly begins, or when they’re scrolling down their screen on a social media app and a sponsored advertisement pops up, the lasting memory that that consumer will have is of the brand logo of the ad. "Brand logos are the most famous images of our time", said Tim Nudd, columnist for adweek.com, in his article “How Hard Is It to Draw a Brand Logo From Memory? Much, Much Harder Than You Thought”. In this article Nudd comments on an intriguing study that Signs.com did where they asked 150 Americans to recreate and draw from memory 10 famous modern logos. Here were some the results:

The results were that most people are very good at remembering brand colors (80% of people selected the correct colors), but shapes and elements in the logos were a lot harder to remember. Nudd said that “these ubiquitous emblems largely exist as fuzzy visions in our mind’s eye”. It also makes sense that the more complex the logo was, the less likely people were going to remember it fully. 
It is important to take some time and be considerate of different ideas when coming up with a brand logo for a company as it will be the one of the most important visual assets that company will have. Complexity of the brand logo can be a challenge when it comes to making that decision when you take these results into account.
It is not a good strategy to change your logo over time because companies that did that, like Starbucks and Burger King, saw a group of people mistake old and new versions of their logo when drawing it from memory. Some people associated a crown with Burger King’s logo even though it currently doesn’t include one at all, and about half the people that drew the Starbucks logo forgot that the mermaid now currently does have a crown. If Burger King continues to market their crown symbol very strongly, then it could continue to take away credibility from their brand
 in the industry, especially online.

http://www.adweek.com/creativity/how-hard-is-it-to-draw-a-brand-logo-from-memory-much-much-harder-than-you-thought/


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