Who You Say You Are – Logos & Branding

I’m so glad my daughter is still a baby because there’s hope that things in this country will completely turn around before she enters her teenage years.

Maybe she’ll listen to her old man. When she tries to run out of the house in some crazy outfit, maybe she’ll defer to my more than a quarter century (!) of marketing, branding, and design experience. Maybe she’ll listen when I run a little focus group in the living room (including a test market of approximately two – me and her mother) and explain that what she looks like is saying something to the outside world.

I mean, I once sat down with a company who thought their fancy script logo was hitting their target market of 15-25 year olds when it really conjured images of lace doilies and grandmas. Truth be told, businesses aren’t always the best judge of how their image is being received.

I could talk about design elements and compositional structures; I could talk about colors and how these elements affect the overall brand. But the most important thing I can say is that a company’s identity is their face, the initial point of interaction for many consumers. As such, you want to make sure that your logo is effectively communicating your brand. You want to make sure that who your logo says you are and who you really are match up.

My wife says I’m a little crazy to be worried about this now. But last night, instead of some silly story about a talking animal, I let my daughter flip through an annual of award winning brand identities. I’m happy to report she was most drawn to the classics – clean, simple, decent.

There’s hope for us all.


Gary LoBue, Jr.
Art Director
The Russo Group