Identity Design

Various branding and logo designs

Art Direction | Visual Identity | Strategy

Some words of Wisdom from Sagi Haviv, a partner and designer at Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv, a brand design firm behind many of the world’s most recognizable logos

What’s a Good Logo?

There are a lot of misconceptions about what logos should be or should look like. Many people feel a logo should be pretty, or say a lot about the company, or be well-liked. According to Sagi, these are just simply not true.

A good logo needs to be three things: appropriate, distinct and memorable, and simple. The magic happens when a logo is distinctive and simple. It needs to be recognizable and translatable across platforms. One way you could test the simplicity and distinctiveness of a logo is to try and draw it by hand from memory.

A bad logo, then, is rather complicated and out of tune with the brand’s personality. It’s not reflective of the company, and it tries to be too many things.

What a Logo Is, and What It Isn’t

A logo is not communication. It’s identification. It’s the period at the end of a sentence; not the sentence itself. This is why simplicity of the logo is so important.

The simpler a logo is, the more recognizable it becomes, and the easier it is for us to identify what company that logo represents. The point of the logo is that it endures over time.