What makes a great credit union logo?

Posted by Tony

March 13, 2008

There are five critical elements that can be seen in every great logo design:

It must be describable
It must be memorable
It must be effective in black and white (and at low resolutions – say on a fax)
It must be scalable (this means it will work well on pens or other swag)
It should never include a photo or raster image (yes, never)

The first elements points are a little obvious, because if you can’t describe what a logo looks like then how will you be able to remember it?

Number 3 is important because color is secondary to the shape and message of the piece. Any designer with experience and a track record will tell you that color choice is left to the very end of the design process. You never know how your logo will be seen. It may be photocopied or faxed or imprinted on a pen. It should work in black and white because there’s a chance that’s exactly how it will be viewed.

Number 4 is important for things such as office stationery (pens, pin badges etc.). All those little things that people forget about when marveling about their super cool new logo.

Number 5 only really makes sense to designers that have to deal with this stuff. We had a client once that wanted to use a photo of their mascot in their logo. After spending hours explaining that this would not allow the logo to be scalable, represent well in a fax, horrible for exterior signage and just bad logo mojo in general – they paid us to proceed with what they requested. So we did. We sent them the logo printed out on mock stationary and then a copy of the logo on a 3foot by 5 foot poster. They said the picture looked like a “fuzzy blob”. We said, “You are right”. Later they ditched that logo option.

Think about the logos that you see daily. McDonalds? Doesn’t get more basic. BMW, Mercedes Benz, Audi, Ford and Chevy? Yep, they look so commonplace that they almost look like clipart – but I bet you and draw each of them without thinking about it.

Look at what we did. For almost 15 years we had this logo of an A with a crazy illustration in it.

I always hated that logo. When I took over, that was one of the first things that I wanted to retire. I did a little market research and found that the only thing the people saw when they looked at our logo was the black A. The other stuff was fluff, visual noise that was filtered out. Love it or hate it, people really recognize the logo - and isn’t that the point? We went with the basic and clean A that we use now and instead, we use solid colors to add impact.

The first tradeshow we did after the logo change (and we changed our corporate colors and style) people walked up to our booth to find out who we were and then when they saw the A they said “Oh Hey! I know who you guys are!”

We will probably keep this A for a few more years. We have talked about making it more 3 dimensional or making it more “Web 2.0” but then I look at what Xerox did and think – Nah!