Design a logo that captures who you are, what you stand for and captures your personality.
Logo Design & Branding
Introduction
The primary value attached to logos has traditionally focused on identifying and differentiating the brand from its competitors. Research on logos has highlighted other derived consumer outputs such as consumer affective reactions, emphasizing that logos can generate positive emotions and convey the brand's meaning were the first to present logos as triggers of affective responses before the cognitive process. Logos can be more than simple tools for identification and differentiation to ensure consumer commitment and improve firm performance. A product or service is not consumed because of any real need associated with that good but because of the semantic content, it conveys.
Companies invest significant amounts of time and money promoting, updating, and changing their logos, and marketing managers could benefit considerably from understanding the principles of designing, selecting, and modifying logos.
Brand logo design
As a brand identity sign, a logo can refer to various graphic or typeface elements, ranging from word-driven, i.e., including wordmarks or stylized letter marks, to image-driven, i.e., including pictorial marks. The term "logo" to refer the graphic element that a company uses to identify itself or its products.
Design characteristics influence cognitive and affective reactions to logos before any promotional activity is implemented. For example, brands with a greater aesthetic appeal pleasure visual gratification and are also more likely to facilitate emotional bonds between the company and its customers. On the other hand, affective reactions to a logo are critical since such reactions can be transferred from the identity signs to the product or company with little or no processing. Furthermore, in low-involvement settings, the effect attached to a logo is one of the few cues that differentiate the product or the company.
The brand effect is related to the emotions or feelings experienced with the brand and is positively related to brand loyalty. There is increasing support that brand evaluations are based not only on objective judgments but also on affective responses to the brand experienced during exposure to brand communications, induced by the aesthetic qualities of the brand's product or its identity signs. For example, when consumers must appraise an object before they receive information about it, the object's appearance is likely to stimulate them to form an initial affective response that they might use as a basis for the judgments, independent of the criteria they might otherwise apply.
As aesthetic appeal and design become an essential component of corporate marketing, we understand that it is necessary to determine how design elements such as naturalness versus abstractness create different affective responses.
Naturalness and affective response toward the brand
Logo strategy has underlined the advantages of using pictorial logos. Logos suggestive of a recognizable object can add the most value to the brands they represent. Logos representative of familiar and widely recognized things is more effective at producing correct recognition and positive affect than more abstract logos. Natural forms are defined by the degree to which the form depicts commonly experienced objects. At this point, a differentiation between cultural and organic characteristics, including inanimate objects (e.g., the Traveler's umbrella) and living organisms (e.g., Apple's apple), is introduced. According to semiotics, figurativeness and its opposite endpoint, abstractness, reflect the degree to which a sign depicts objects from the natural and sensitive world: a sign is abstract when there are no links to the diplomatic world; in the opposite situation, we could say that a sign is figurative. Figurative signs represent objects from the real world and have a deep and consensually held cultural meaning.
Following semiotic classification, we propose a distinct type of logo design that more accurately reflects the degree to which logo design depicts commonly experienced objects from the natural or cultural environment. First, we will use the term natural when referring to symbolic signs and thus distinguish between natural and abstract designs. Then, within natural designs, we will differentiate between cultural and organic designs: organic logo design refers to logos that depict "biological objects," that is, objects from the natural world (i.e., flowers, fruits, animals, faces, landscapes, etc.), and cultural logo design refers to logos that depict "manufactured objects" (e.g., house, table, boat) or other cultural symbols (e.g., punctuation marks or the Christian cross), that is, objects that do not have a natural biological origin (i.e., buildings, furniture, everyday objects, written symbols, etc.). Logos depicting characters, places, animals, fruits, or other things from the sensitive or real-world demand lower learning effort and are more recognizable. On the other hand, recognizing abstract and meaningless logos may be poor, and abstract designs are more challenging to interpret.
These findings are supported by the acknowledged aesthetic primacy of natural forms in logo design. Veryzer's theory of aesthetic response suggests that individuals surrounded by a common, natural environment form similar non-conscious rule systems that inform their design preferences. To the extent that one can count on a shared physical environment, one can also rely on a broad range of commonly acquired likings. Natural logos depict biological or other real phenomena in our environment, and therefore one should expect natural logos to be the most preferred logos.
Based on previous insights, we expected differences in evaluations for consumers confronted with natural compared to abstract logos. For example, we expected a more significant effect for logo designs representing objects from the wild or real-world than abstract ones. Additionally, we acknowledge the importance of natural designs and suggest that naturalness evokes a more positive affective response. Thus, we hypothesize that:
H1: Affect toward natural logo designs will be greater than effect toward abstract designs.
To our knowledge, no prior study has differentiated between the different types of natural (or symbolic) logo designs. Therefore, we intend to contribute to the existing literature by understanding the various categories of natural logo designs on affective response. Organic objects are immediately recognized for their sensitive properties; cultural objects do not have an innate biological origin. Thus, they should be more challenging to memorize and trigger less positive affective responses.
Theological theorists suggest that humans have an innate, hardwired preference for natural forms that embody organic principles. Hence, designs that resemble organic forms tend to be preferred. Similarly, consumer brand impressions on package design research conclude that organic designs (including landscapes, plants, and other images of nature) convey positive brand impressions. Thus, we hypothesize that:
H2: Within natural designs, the effect toward organic logo designs will be greater than that of cultural designs.
Another aim of this article was to explain the effect of socio-demographic variables on affective response toward logo design. Regarding gender, we suggest that females tend to prefer designs linked to biological themes like flowers, butterflies, or the sun. In contrast, males tend to prefer designs linked to technology and machines, related to cultural designs.
Furthermore, gender tastes and preferences in product design always show that females are more interested in organic forms and themes based on femininity, nature, and plant life. In contrast, the selections of males tended to be those of more traditional and geometric forms. Hence, we hypothesize that:
H3. 1: Females will display a more significant effect on organic designs.
H3. 2: Males will display a more significant effect on cultural designs.
Although few studies analyze how the response to brand or brand identity signs varies with age, several studies show that older consumers prefer long-established options. Habits become more potent with age, and thus older adults may be more likely to choose long-established options. Additionally, older adults emphasize affective factors, which may lead them to prefer options with which they are more familiar. Indeed, familiar objects (e.g., a well-known brand or design) tend to be more emotionally meaningful. Hence, focusing on affective factors might lead older adults to prefer long-known (i.e., familiar) options. Natural logos represent objects from the sensitive or real-world, long-established, and long known. Thus, older adults may be more likely to prefer them over more abstract and less familiar designs. Therefore, we hypothesize that:
H4: There will be a positive relationship between age and affect toward natural logo designs.
Method
Stimulus selection
Unfamiliar stimuli were chosen to assess the effects of logo design on consumer responses and thereby eliminate the influences of brand awareness and brand attitude. However, a brand can be a vital attribute of consumers' holistic impression of the brand identity signs. Well-known brands influence consumer preferences because they promise a particular quality level, reduce risk, and engender trust. Thus, one should expect well-known logos to be the most preferred logos.
Definitions and examples of logos:
Abstract
A logo with no connection with the real world is artificially constructed and non-representative (i.e., squares, rectangles, triangles, horizontal or vertical stripes, circles and dots, ovals, arcs, swooshes, etc.).
Cultural
A logo represents manufactured objects (i.e., buildings, furniture, transport vehicles, everyday objects) or other cultural symbols (i.e., written symbols).
Organic
A logo represents objects from the natural world (i.e., flowers, fruits, vegetables, animals, faces, bodies, landscapes, etc.).
Summary
Naturalness is an essential element of logo design, which influences affective response to the logo. Naturalness explains a high percentage of the effect toward the logos. Moreover, the practical importance of naturalness is similar in the two studies. Previous research related to logo strategy has underlined the advantages of pictorial or natural logos, but no study has differentiated between the different types of natural logo designs. The distinction between organic and cultural logo designs leads to significant findings, complementing semiotics research, logo strategy, and aesthetic response theory. Organic logo designs are always better evaluated in terms of effect, followed by cultural designs. Abstract logos always induce lower levels of affective response by the respondents. Hence, these results empirically demonstrate the importance of organic designs, providing evidence that the designs that represent objects from the natural world are the ones that elicit the most pleasing effect.
Additionally, the effect toward unknown organic logos and well-known abstract logos is almost similar. Hence, by choosing an organic logo design, a new brand will begin with a level of effect identical to an established brand with an abstract logo. From a managerial perspective, this is a significant finding. Like brand awareness, an essential source of brand equity that has a high cost for the firm can be replaced cost-free with the type of logo design chosen. On the other hand, that effect toward the different categories of logos is related. Thus, when a person likes one logo design category better, they will also appreciate the other categories more (and vice-versa). These suggest that some respondents have a higher effective response toward logos and will give logos a higher affect score, regardless of logo design or recognition. Furthermore, the strongest positive correlation was between the effect toward the two categories of natural logos (organic and cultural).
Older consumers tend to prefer well-known options. We suggest there might be a positive correlation between age and affect toward several categories of logos. As age increases, people tend to demonstrate more significant effects toward the various logo designs. The highest correlation was observed between age and cultural logos. Cultural objects are learned throughout our lives. In addition, we found that females display significantly higher affect scores toward known organic logos than males. Thus, an awareness of these design preferences is essential concerning selecting logos targeted at males and females.
To summarize, despite the explored socio-demographic variables' effect on logo design, natural logos are preferred to abstract logos, and, within natural logos, organic designs are favored over cultural designs. Thus, for the maximum positive effect, it is suggested that managers choose logos with natural designs.
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