What a logo is actually for

The brief usually says the mark should communicate innovation, trust, and warmth. No mark has ever done this. A shape cannot say innovation. What it can do is become the thing people recognise as you, after which they will attach whatever you actually turn out to be.

Recognition is the whole job

Everything that matters about a mark falls out of that. It has to be distinct from its neighbours, stable across sizes, and legible at speed. Those are testable properties, unlike warmth.

So I test them. Print the candidates at 8mm and pin them across the room. Look at them out of focus. Show someone for one second and ask what they saw. Most directions die in that test, and they die cheaply, which is the point.

Design for the worst reproduction

The mark will be embroidered badly. It will be faxed — yes, still. It will be a favicon at 16 pixels, a stamp in wet ink, a sticker applied crookedly. Design for the worst of these and the good cases handle themselves.

Fine detail is a promise you are making about every future print run.

The parts nobody looks at

The mark is maybe a tenth of an identity. The rest is the typeface, the spacing, the way photographs are cropped, the tone of a shipping confirmation. That is what people are actually recognising by month three.

Which is a relief. It means the mark does not have to carry a meaning it was never able to carry — it only has to be unmistakable, and then get out of the way.