June 23, 2020
Why the first design you’re shown is often the best.
Over the past 20+ years that Mark has been designing logos and branding for businesses, he has worked with many clients from all different types of industries. From seafood wholesalers, to life insurance, cafes to builders, architects to allied health, product inventors to real estates and everything in between.
When showing the client the first logo concepts, many times there is often a moment of sheer delight when the client views a concept that they connect with and would be a great representation of their brand and potentially increase their market share in their respective industry.
They love it, having never thought that their logo could be so good and leave ever so happy with the result. Winning, right?!
Ahhh, not so much. They then proceed to show it to a number of people including their kids, significant other, colleague, the mechanic down the street, their uncle who has an arts degree and even the postman. After they gather all of the feedback things often can take a turn for the worse….
The Next Day
The next day we get a phone call or email. It normally starts with, we loved the logo you worked on for us, BUT my uncle who used to be a designer, my golf pro or colleague had some suggestions on how it could be improved. Could we take out that major design element and replace it with (insert logo copied from the internet here) and somehow integrate another element. Could we then change the typeface to being more (modern/traditional/classic/space aged - which is the polar opposite of the initial brief)?
We don’t normally like to say no but often a conversation about why that new element doesn’t work goes unheard. Given it’s the client’s logo, the design team attempts to make the new additions look as good as possible to please the client.
The logo starts to grow a second head, the text is no longer slick and the other changes make it overly complicated. The result is usually less than great and the client doesn’t like the look of this revision. They normally try and make some more revisions to fix it but the result is sub-par.
At this point some clients are brave enough to say “I have been looking at the evolution of the logo concepts and after looking at it with fresh eyes, we/I think that the original one you did is the best and we would really like to go with that one”.
The reality is, a graphic designer normally looks at the segment of the market you hold (or wish to hold) and then designs a logo that would attract that customer.
If you look at a logo concept for the first time and you are blown away with how good it looks, that’s what your customers will think as well. That’s the impression you want! If it’s not love at first sight, then by all means, we will work on other concepts to find one you do love.
Need a new logo or rebrand? Get in touch!
