More than often there is a clash between creativity and practicality whenever a new logo needs to be designed for a client. This clash stems from the designer wishing to show his great artistic talents, and forgetting somewhat about the important factors that makes a great logo.

Logo design is not easy, as it needs a special talent to show a clients personality, style and character with just a few strokes. It needs to be robust, and correctly reproducible in the most difficult of circumstances, and need to withstand copying, faxing and printing in a variety of ways.The key thing then with logos, as it is with personal names, is simply that others can remember it easily, associate it with us and spell and pronounce it correctly at all times.

So, if you are going to make a commercially sound logo, then why not follow the principals established by those brands that have already reached the top and are rated as the top 50 logo designs in the world. I have taken as my source the report by BusinessWeek on ‘Top 100 Global Brands Scoreboard’ published on their website.

According to the ‘Top 100 Global Brands Scoreboard’ report the top 50 brands & logo designs in ranking order were:

Coca-Cola, Microsoft, IBM, GE, Intel, Nokia, Walt Disney, McDonald’s, Toyota, Marlboro, Mercedes-Benz, Citi, Hewlett-Packard, American Express, Gillette, BMW, Cisco, Louis Vuitton, Honda, Samsung, Dell, Ford, Pepsi, Nescafé, Merrill Lynch, Budweiser, Oracle, Sony, HSBC, Nike, Pfizer, UPS, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, Canon, SAP, Goldman Sachs, Google, Kellogg’s, Gap, Apple, Ikea, Novartis, UBS, Siemens, Harley-Davidson, Heinz, MTV, Gucci and Nintendo.

You would think that an analyis of this list should give some good commercial pointers to a good commercial new logo design. So here then is a description of a logo designs that conforms as near as possible with the emphasis supported by these top 50 brands (the (%) identifies the percentage of these brands that hold to this view) :

  • The name does not describe the product sold (94%)
  • The by-line tag is not included in the logo (90%)
  • The font style is clean and clear (84%)
  • The logo design uses one colour only (74%) (white & black not counted as a colour)
  • The logo design uses letters only without the symbol (74%)
  • The logo design is a made-up name or ACRONYM (72%)
  • The logo design is rectangular in shape (66%)
  • The logo design is one word only (62%)
  • The logo design includes the trademark symbol (54%) and is placed in the top right (48%)
  • The name is 6 letters or less (52%)
  • The name uses upper & lower case (44%) (excluding ACRONYMS)
  • The background is filled and solid. (52%)
  • The pronunciation includes three sounds/syllables (44%)
  • The predominant colour base is blue (40%)