Your company logo is an essential part of growing your brand, but you need to use it consistently for it to have value. What’s more, you need to use the design elements that make up your logo – colors, fonts, etc. – just as consistently in all your marketing materials. It should be easy for a person to determine that your varied marketing materials come from a single company, and those materials should make people feel the same way about the company.
Color Consistency: If your logo is green in one ad and purple in the next, consumers might feel confused. These two colors evoke very different thoughts and emotions. The same could be said of a logo that is deep red on a business card but light pink in an ad. Color consistency is critical to creating a unique brand identity, so choose a primary brand color from the Pantone Matching System (PMS), use it in your logo, and make it the dominant color in all of your materials.
Graphic Element Consistency: If your company logo design includes a specific symbol or shape, integrate that design into all of your marketing materials. Graphic elements can become visual cues to consumers and aid in brand recognition and recall. Just be consistent!
Font Consistency: What would you think if a brand like Mercedes started using a font like Disney’s branded font in its marketing materials? Most consumers would be confused. They would wonder why a high-end, luxury brand is using a fun font design that seems more suitable to children than expensive car buyers. You’d be right to be confused, and this is exactly why it’s important that you choose a primary font for your brand, use it in your company logo design, and consistently use it in all of your marketing and business communications.
Message Consistency: Before you can create brand messages, you need to understand what your target audience wants and needs from your brand, how your brand is positioned in relation to competitors, and how you what people to perceive your brand. Once you have that information, you can write messages in the style and voice that your target audience will respond to. For example, a highly professional business would use a different style and words than a friendly, family business.
Logo Consistency: As explained at the beginning of this article, your logo is the core tangible element of your brand identity, so it must always be reproduced online and offline in the correct color, proportion, and quality. If your logo looks terrible, so does your business by association.
Brand identity is essential to brand recognition and recall. Be consistent and your brand will grow in time.
