The first taboo: elemental taboos

Elemental taboos are actually cultural (religious) taboos. Due to cultural differences between countries, each country and region has certain specific taboos. For example, Japan taboos lotus and the numbers 9 and 4, South Korea also taboos 4, Americans taboos the number 13, and Canada and the UK taboo white lilies. The lotus flowers, numbers, etc. I mentioned above often appear in the form of graphic elements in logo design. Therefore, you need to ensure that you fully understand the local cultural conditions at the beginning of the project. More content, no further explanation.

The understanding of dragons in Eastern and Western cultures is very different. What is considered auspicious and sacred in the East is understood to be evil in the West. This is also the reason why dragons are rarely used as mascots in international competitions held in the East.

Of course, in my memory, there have been exceptions

The reasons behind it will not be explained in detail

-

Second level Taboo: Communication Taboo

I will focus on this. Whether we are discussing various taboos, aesthetics, or the connotation of graphics, in fact, we are all trying to improve the dissemination of the logo.

Logo, brand name, advertising slogan, product quality... and many other aspects help to promote the brand image. If the brand image needs to be deeply rooted in the minds of consumers, the first condition is that it can be spread, and then it is conducive to spread.

The following content only explains and analyzes logos that violate communication conditions.

The picture above shows the three factors that affect the spread of a logo.

-

1. Easy to apply? 1.1 Media

As the identity label of the brand, the logo will appear in front of customers at the same time as the product.

The fabric of clothes, the alloy of cars, the aluminum cans of drinks, the wood of pencils, the plastic of communication equipment... these are all media for logo presentation. At present, very few people will consider this first, because with the improvement of technological level, these problems have gradually been solved on some media where it was once impossible to print logos.

-

1.2 Media

Media is different from media.

Fabric can be understood as the medium for the clothing brand logo to appear, and the collar back label is the medium for the clothing brand logo to appear.

Alloy can be understood as the medium for the appearance of car brand logos, and the front face, steering wheel, and car keys are the media for the appearance of car brand logos.

When designing a logo, you must fully understand what media the logo will appear on.

When the media area is small, it is not appropriate to have a complicated logo. Of course, this function is currently gradually replaced by auxiliary graphics in VI design. For example, the three stripes of victory of adidas in the picture below were created to adapt to different media considerations.

For example, in the picture above, the elements in the logo are split. In the early stage of design, the application needs of different media are fully considered when designing.

-

First summary:

In logo design, the final implementation medium should be fully considered.

I once encountered an incident. The client was a domestic mobile phone brand and asked to design a logo. However, the designer just picked it up without considering the publishing medium at all. In the end, an overly complex logo appeared on the product. , really can’t see clearly. Since it cannot be seen clearly, it is even more impossible to talk about identification and dissemination.

-

2. Easy to recognize? The psychology behind easy recognition is actually easy to perceive.

After seeing the logo, consumers can quickly understand what kind of enterprise or product it is through the style of the logo.

The logo in the picture above is a wrong choice if applied to men’s related products.

2.1 The expression form of logo

For the expression form of logo, it is usually divided into the following three categories in form:

A. Mainly graphics

B. Mainly text.

C. Combination of graphics and text

For C, the combination of graphics and text, I would like to make a special note. The Lenovo logo is in the upper right corner of the picture above. Since we are a Chinese alphabet language area, the Lenovo in the logo When we look at the English words, our first reaction is not to understand them as words, but as graphics.

For more details, please go to: Why are many people unable to accept the appearance of Chinese characters in product designs?

First of all, let’s explain the “graphics” mentioned above.

Graphics, as one of the main elements that make up a logo, can be divided into the following two categories in terms of expression:

a. Reflect the industry or brand value connotation (abstract type)

This type of graphic design is often used for: companies with specific businesses but no specific products; companies with rich product lines; companies with rich business formats; companies with low industry awareness.... ..

Since the specific shape cannot reflect the characteristics of the industry or the scope of business covered, most logo designs use graphics to reflect a certain mental state or appearance.

b. Reflect the characteristics of the industry or brand (concrete type)

Graphics are directly drawn from the characteristics of the industry or product features, and are the main form of expression of graphics in this type of logo.

This type of graphic design is often used in: service-oriented organizations with high recognition; companies with a single product line...

-

2.2 What are the taboos of graphics? Whether it is the above-mentioned concrete or abstract graphics, more consideration needs to be given to the graphic style to avoid ambiguous associations.

As follows:

(The above pictures are from the Internet)

-

2.3 Taboos of portrait logos

Here, it is particularly noted that the human avatar is used as the main graphic of the brand logo

The four sets of logos in the above examples all have human portraits as the main basic type. Except for the Lao Gan Ma brand, the other three groups all use two-dimensional processing of the characters in terms of expression, weakening the characters' true social identity and emphasizing the character's connotation and positioning (KFC: amiable; Wang Zhihe: traditional; Zhen Kung Fu: domineering ).

When some brands were first founded, they concentrated on product research and development, channel construction and other conveniences, and paid little attention to the creation of brand image. Because I believe too much in the principle that "good wine is not afraid of deep alleys". And because the brand owner misunderstands the meaning of the brand and hopes to build itself into a brand instead of the product, it goes against the market rules of enterprise development. This is the main reason why portrait logos have become so popular in the past few years. Such a form of expression will bring some bad associations to viewers. In recent years, portrait logos have been criticized a lot, and many brand owners have gradually changed their thinking and no longer insist on using their own avatars as brand logos.

-

2.3 Taboos of font styles

Above, we briefly talked about the taboos of graphic styles. Next, let’s talk about another element that makes up a logo— —Text

Let’s first look at the Chinese pinyin of Zhihu in the picture above. You can feel it for yourself, which one do you think makes you feel more serious? Which one is more entertaining?

I would like to emphasize again that in logo design, the difference between graphics and text is actually very blurry. Although zhihu in the picture above appears in text form, our first impression is still that it is graphics to understand. For specific content, please go to: Why are many people unable to accept the appearance of Chinese characters in the design of products?

The specific font experience will not be extended here. You can move to: What are the rules for English capitalization of business logos?

-

2.4 Taboos in color selection

Color is the most attractive element.

When choosing colors, you must first refer to the first cultural (religious) taboo, and secondly, the fit with the industry.

The color distribution of internationally renowned brand logos is particularly concentrated in certain segments (blue, red, yellow), and particularly rare in certain segments (green, purple, purple-red). Why?

The same graphics are the main ones, but the use of different colors will produce different psychological feelings. Generally speaking, food products should avoid cold colors; children should avoid cold colors; the psychological feelings of more colors will not be explained one by one here. If you have the chance, please give a specific answer.

-

Second summary:

In logo design, the style of graphics, whether concrete or abstract, needs to be based on the beauty and association of graphics. Think more. Avoid ambiguity. In particular, some figurative graphic logos, since they appear in a figurative way, should reflect the characteristics of the product or industry more accurately to avoid drawing tiger-like dogs.

As for the choice of text font style, you need to have a more thorough understanding of the company or brand value positioning, and then choose a font that matches the brand image positioning to express it. Choosing the wrong font will violate the original intention of brand image positioning.

-

3. Easy to copy Before looking at the following content, let us do a small test first. You can take a piece of paper and a pen and draw a logo that you can remember. Let’s take a look at which logos are most memorable to us.

The visual image of a logo does not have such a large communication opportunity as the advertising copy. We can use advertising slogans in our daily life in a joking way, such as Zhao Benshan's sentence: "Whoever uses it knows it!"

The logo needs to be easy to spread, and it needs to be complex. Complex design concepts. This point is ignored by most designers or clients, but in my opinion it is the most important and the main criterion for measuring the strength of logo communication. Customers will mistakenly think that if they spend money and cannot buy something complicated, it is not cost-effective. Designers will mistakenly believe that if they don’t make a complex design, it will not reflect their own strength. These concepts are all wrong.

After iOS7 became what it is now, everyone complained and said it was ugly, but few people found the opportunity. After throwing away the complicated skeuomorphic design, what was left to us was, It is the basic graphics that really pulls the wool off the cocoon. The basic shapes in the world are nothing more than circles, squares, triangles, hexagons... Whoever can seize the mental positioning of these graphics in the minds of customers as soon as possible will have the future in your hands. When we see hooks, who do we think of? Who do we think of when we see the blue, red and white Tai Chi pattern? That's the beauty of simplicity.

Third summary:

Don’t be complicated just to pursue formal complexity, thereby violating the original intention of communication.