A Great Logo: What It Is, How You Get One

A great logo is an essential part of your brand. Is yours great? Is it easily recognizable? Does it work well large (on the side of a building) and small (in a 3” x 5” ad)? Can you identify it from across a room? If you don’t feel you can be objective about yours, get the opinion of one or more marketing or design professionals (or send it to us, we’ll be honest!).

You need a great logo that represents your mission.

Design requires a professional. If you do not have the budget to hire one, look for a designer willing to work pro-bono.

A logo is one element of an identity package - a really important part of establishing your brand. These are the elements you will want your designer to provide:

1. The symbol – a stylized version of your organization name, with or without an accompanying graphic.

2. Official color selection – you’ll select Pantone colors (this is what designer’s use); this ensures matching the color for print, web and even paint.

3. Your selected font(s) – consistently using the same one or two fonts adds to creating an image that becomes associated with your organization.

4. A tagline – if this is not a service provided by your designer, you could have your Naming Team draft one. The tagline quickly and cleverly supports your name, further describing your organization.

5. Standards – ideally you will be given a small book (paper or digital) showing how the logo can and cannot be used. This would include one and two color versions of your logo, horizontal and vertical versions etc.

6. Selected materials incorporating logo – you will need new letterhead and other stationary items as well as a revised website. Hopefully you have the budget (or can secure funding) to do all this at once, if not spread it out.

Form a selection team before you begin the process of logo and standard development. That team should be given the authority to make selections – otherwise you could be in a never ending review process! You need a great Logo! This is one of the first Actions in The Winner's Circle because it is important to your growth and success. We created a simple tool that will help you determine how good yours is.

Test your logo with our Logo Tool. Just request it in the email form, we'll send it out today. It's free!