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>> If you're a trouble getting people to notice your business or even to care about it at all, now there are several reasons why this could be happening. But one of the most common is that your visual brand doesn't set you apart from your competitors, which means potential customers don't think of you when they have a problem.
“That's why today's episode is all about logos.”
As John Falcons sits down, but my senior creative officer, Tim Nude. >> Thanks Dave. So we're going to go through some of the most iconic logos that there are Tim and I appreciate you being here.
But first, I want to ask you, what are all of those brands do really well to have logos that win?
>> It's really only two things when it comes down to it. >> Okay. >> Really great logo. It has to convey meaning or feel. It has to be able to see it, that it feels like something.
And the reasons because our brain is constantly scanning everything in our unconscious brain, is scanning and making decisions about everything that we see. And if a logo isn't visually showing the meaning, then our brain isn't catching that meaning. And so there has to be intentionality about how do the shapes convey the meaning of the brand? Like everything comes into play, colors and lines and typography and spacing, all that stuff means something.
And so it has to convey meaning in some way. The second thing is that it has to be a recognizable shape. You know, like, it just has to be recognizable because it has to be able to be unique from the crowd. Like there are millions and millions of brands out in the world of logos on the world.
And if your logo looks like somebody else's logo, then you're never going to make the mental connection
that you're hoping the logo is going to do. And I think about, like, this as a character illustrator, one of the things that tells you if it's a good character is if you can look at the silhouette and you know who the character is. And so you think about any famous character like Mickey Mouse or Homer Simpson or anything like that. You can look at the silhouette and be like, that's Mickey Mouse, that's the homer sense.
That makes us probably a pretty memorable character, you know, and same thing with the logo.
“You need to be able to look at a quickly and say, oh, yeah, I know exactly what that is.”
But if you, if you don't create a unique shape for the logo, you're never going to get that. And you're trying to stand out in a crowd of millions of logos. We see 5,000 brands a day and you have to stand out against 5,000 a day. So we see 5,000 brands a day, really?
Yeah, but it sounds insane, but that's a real step.
We see 5,000 brands a day. Wow. And so that's how many logos, that's how many things we're seeing just as we're going out in the world. It's insane. I mean, when you're driving down the road, you're seeing all the brands of the cars. You're seeing billboards, you're seeing buildings, and they all have branding, you know? Yeah. Your logo has to be memorable out of those 5,000.
Okay. So it should probably be pretty unique, you know? Yeah. I think I understand, be unique, right? It's got to stand out from the 5,000, but convey meaning. Can you talk a little bit more about them? So if, if I were to say that our brand needs to convey moving quickly, what kinds of things would
convey moving quickly? If you take a line and slant it forward, it's going to convey moving quickly. Okay. If you, if you, if you draw a lot of, a lot of little lines behind a character that's slanting forward, that's going to convey speed, right? If you want to convey trust, it should probably be a lot of 90 degree angles, very straight up and down, very tall, because we trust things that look like that. It looks stable, even colors play a role into this,
like purple indicates royalty, red indicates love. Okay. So those are the things that the great brands or the great logos have. Yeah. One of the most common mistakes people make. Like how do you screw this up? Yeah. Well, I actually get to take those two things I said and just flip them and go the opposite
“way and that's what people do wrong. So what I mean is, you talk about being unique, right?”
Yeah. One thing I see all the time, and this is whether, whether you're a leader for business or you're the designer, I see it all the time that people will design logos that just look cool. And that's the whole planning and that's all that trying to do is make something that looks cool. And what they end up doing a lot of times is they're going places like Pinterest or they're going dribble, which is a place where you just look at great design work. Okay. And they'll just copy
something cool that they see. Okay. But there's nothing unique about it. And it's going to look like everybody else because because you're just copying everybody else does. Also with just looking cool, you're not conveying any meaning because you're saying this looks cool. But there's not any tension out of you around what lines much using, what shapes so much using, what colors, what typography, currenting, letting all that kind of stuff isn't being put into play. And so I see
it all the time for instance, how often do you see a logo that has two arrows crisscrossing? And then words in the negative space, and on the left and right, it says established on one side, and then a date on the other side. I have seen that. Yeah. Have you seen them a whole? Yeah. Ah, aesthetically, it's pretty. Yeah. But I am not going to see that logo and connect it to any one brand because thousands of brands do that exact same thing. Yeah. And you're defeating the whole
Purpose.
whole point is to show up the same way over and over again. And so then when people see you
eventually and see that logo split second, they know exactly who that is. That's not going to
happen if you're copying other people's logos. Yeah. And so that's the biggest thing I see people do all the time. Just copying something else or they're not thinking about any kind of meaning and making any intentional choices. They're the same. This looks cool. And they're just going off of good. Man, it's cool. They're the end really, they're really putting themselves into it at all. So it doesn't really reflect anything about who they are. Yeah, not at all. Yeah. Let's talk a little
bit about some of the logos that have just crushed over over the years. And I know, you know,
“several come to mind. I think one of the most popular ones, of course, is Nike this one, right?”
Break that down for me. Why has that worked? That's such a good one because, okay, when we're talking about, we're talking about conveying meaning, right? Right? So Nike, if they were to ask themselves, what do we want people to expect when they interact with our brand? What would they want people to say? Probably fast and winning. It's probably the things, right? Right? That's probably what you want with Nike, right? And so what that logo does, you talk about a shape that conveys meaning. That shape is
conveying fast and winning. Because you got the swoop in the logo, right? Which is movement. And then it just speeds up and goes to that really fine point on the right side, right? That is movement and speed. Yeah. The fast movement like that. And when it comes to winning, I know that that logo originally was designed based off of like the wing of Nike, the goddess of victory, right? And Greek mythology. And so it's such a simple shape. And, you know, they also kind of have the
the advantage, I'd say, of that logo is created in the early 70s. Okay? So you don't have the millions and millions and millions of logos you got now. There was definitely a lot of them. They really got it. Yeah, do something really simple. And that conveys the meaning. And now they have decades of brand equity and decades of wrapping speed and winning around that logo to that. Now when you see that logo, that meaning is so incorporated with it, it's so associated with it.
Yeah. That they're able to really, to really take advantage of that, you know? And what's funny about that logo, Phil Knight, he famously didn't like that logo, right? He began, he said, pay much for it. He didn't. I think it was like 35 bucks or something like that, you know? She
“has been taken care of since then. But that's why it's so good. It conveys meaning. And it's also a”
pretty unique shape. I've never seen a logo that looks like that. Like exactly like that. And people
have might have tried to copy since then and certain elements of it. But it was very unique when it came out and it conveyed a lot of meaning, winning and victory or victory in a speed. That's cool. Yeah. How about another one? How about Fed X? That's a logo we see a lot of. Yeah. Yeah. That one's pretty fascinating too. And it's, it's famous for a reason, very intentional and very well done. But what's the same question? If the Fed X people were saying, what do we want people to expect
when they interact with our brand? What would they say? They probably say speed and efficiency. Speed and efficiency? Yeah. Reliability, trust. Like, you know, we're going to get the package on time. Yeah. Exactly. Okay. And so let's take a look at the logo then. You talk about trust in reliability, right? The fact that the F and the E tall, very stable, you know, like those look like really strong fonts, right? Right? And at the same time, those lowercase letters are pretty
low to the ground. And when something's moving fast, it gets lower to the ground, right? And so it has that for speed, right? And you look at the, the currenting and the currenting is just the space between letters. Okay. Okay. You know, why currenting or very tight currenting? It has super tight currenting, like the letters are touching each other. Okay. And so that also indicates movement and speed. There's a little bit of tension when you look at it because the lines are touching. And you kind of
don't want them to touch because it has that tension. But you also have tension when they're speed and movement and everything, right? Yeah. So it has the tension. And then you famously got the arrow in the negative space. We were talking before about the unconscious brain and what
it picks up, right? Our unconscious brain is always taking an information that our logical brain
doesn't know what's picking up. So the fact that they have an arrow in there in the, in the negative space, right? Normally someone has to tell you the arrow is there. But it's just an unconscious thing they did. And clearly the arrow is about momentum and speed and efficiency. And all that's moving. Yeah. So that logo is so well thought out about what it's trying to say
“to where when you see the logo, you just kind of feel speed and efficiency. And that's what you”
want. People might not consciously say speed and efficiency, but you definitely feel it when you see that logo. And they're very intentional. They did a great job of that. Let's do one more. Yeah. Amazon. Yeah. Yeah. What break that one down for? Yeah. So I'm guessing they're probably going with their logo to look happy. So what do they do? They chose a font that's very curvy and very bouncy looking, which is very happy and playful. You know, they also don't use a
capital A, which shows, you know, their customer first approach humility, right? Like they're doing that with it. You obviously have this smile that's underneath it, which also conveys happiness. But you know what I find so fascinating about that logo is you could pretty much get anything with Amazon, right? Yeah. Did you ever notice that the arrow goes from A to Z? Somehow I knew that,
I didn't notice it at first.
trying to convey and it was very intentional. But that's what I mean at the beginning about the
“mistakes. Like if the if the person creating the logo is intentional about what are we trying to say?”
What do people expect? How can we do that with typography and shapes and color and lines and all that kind of stuff, you know? Just some intentionality. Just thinking through it. Yeah. Yeah. So those are three of like the biggest brands in the world, right? But a lot of folks that watch on trade leadership,
they're running an HVAC company or construction company. A lot of multi-million dollar companies.
They're not messing around. But also they're not Amazon. There may be a business just in their community there or in their part of the state. How does this translate when, I don't know, when you're running a small construction company or something that's really just a, I don't want to say just because, you know, we love Main Street businesses, but it's different. Yeah. Well, it is different but the same rules apply. Whether you're a business of one or
2000 or 20,000, the same rules apply. And I'll give you a really good example of this. We were using a plumber before and the plumber, not great. And so we said, you know what, forget this. We got to find somebody else. And so in any time we run into a problem and we need some help,
there's always a first brand that comes to mind. The first brand that comes to mind is going to be
the one that's been the most consistent. Yeah. And the one that you can look at them and kind of understand what they're about, right? Yeah. And so the first brand that came to mind was this, uh, this plumber called Hillar Plumbing, you know. And it came to mind because I see their logo everywhere. Like I see it. That big yellow happy face, big yellow happy face. And even the red type next to it. Yeah. That's, that's very tall, very bold, very curvy and everything, right? Yeah. You put those two
things together and it looks strong and it looks happy. It looks reliable and it looks friendly,
“right? Yeah. Like that's what it looks like. And I see this van going around the community all the”
times. The same van, the same logo. I see that logo on people's shirts. I see that logo when I go to football games and it's the same logo, shout out to the same way every time. And so essentially, shout out to the same way. And since it looks friendly and reliable, Hillar, first brand that came to mind in a split second. Yeah. I need a plumber. Who's that Hillar? Hick, you know, look them up and then one of them. What's interesting to me about that is
you're saying you needed a plumber and that came to mind. Yeah. Hillar came to mind because of the brand because of the logo. Yeah. Not because of word of mouth. It wasn't really just the branding and the logo that did it. Nobody told me about Hillar plumbing. I just saw it all the time, you know. Yeah. And since I saw it show up the same way every time. And I kind of understood what they're about with that big smiley face. Again, miss that big smiley face. You know, before we
talk about conveying me and being unique and memorable. Right. That big smiley face is pretty memorable. Right. No. And so when I see it on vans and shirts and everything, it just gets imprinted in my mind. Yeah. And so then when I finally have a problem of plumbing, that's the first one I got. Yeah. I called them. They did a great job. Now that's who I use. Yeah. You know? And the logo,
just it's powerful. It really is powerful. Because you can, the logo, it locals are so
interesting because they're like writing a headline. Writing a headline is one of the hardest things to do in copywriting. Because you're trying to take a lot of meeting and put it in the fewest amount of words possible. It's the same with a logo. You're trying to take a lot of meeting and put it in the smallest shape possible. The reason you're trying to do that is so you have something simple that can be imprinted in people's brains. And you want it imprinted in people's
brains, not for today, but for tomorrow when they actually have a problem. You know, when they have a problem, you want to be the first one that comes to mind. Yeah. And if you did a good job of creating a great logo and had it just the show up the same way all the time, yeah. You'll be the first that people think of. You're going to imprint it in their brain. And that's what you're trying to do. Yeah, that's cool. Thanks a ton for being here. Yeah, that's super helpful. No good, appreciate it. All right.
That'll be it. A strong logo does way more than just make your website look good. It can
“shape how people see and remember your business. But here's the thing. Branding isn't just about”
logos, colors, or fonts. It's about the full story. Your business tells every time someone interacts with it. Thanks for watching. See you next time.
