The brand name and the logo of your law firm do not only mean a representation of your business. It is way, way more than that. A strong and remarkable branding and logo can send a powerful message to potential clients about what you can offer (services), and of course, your company's core values.
Your law firm's logo is your frontliner. It is the first thing that your clients will see to learn about your law firm. Do we still need to stress out how important it is to have a strong and compelling brand logo?
Sometimes, "brand" and "image" can mean different things to your audience. Sometimes, they take branding as a description of how known is a company's logo, tagline, and other audio or visual advertisement to the public. On the other hand, they say that image usually refers to the audience's opinion about a certain or particular lawyer or how the public views a specific law firm regarding its experience, its size, and its honesty.
The significance of branding and logo
Having a perfectly created brand, image and logo are very significant to law firms for one simple reason: Competition. Even if you're a known well-respected lawyer of a specific law firm, chances are there are also some other lawyers who are known for their experience in your area. Make yourself and the law firm where you're working stand out by good practice and brand establishment.
When should you redesign your company logo?
It is not surprising to see a law firm's logo to become as it is for decades but here are times that a certain company needs to change their logo. Especially when something embarrassing happened or a company has been involved in a scandal.
It is not surprising to see a law firm's logo to become as it is for decades. And then suddenly a new look is shown in public with little or no relationship at all with the previous one. In this scenario, a huge shift of identity is made and might be one of the reasons for your downfall.
Any brand representation such as a logo that has been used for God knows how long possesses precious brand value (regardless of how bad-looking and sickening it is). There are certain major companies that made this drastic change of logo and resulted to shame for failing. And the most common? Tropicana.
Try to check Tropicana's redesigned logo in 2009. According to them, they changed their logo for them to stand out with their competitors. To be honest, this was a very sudden move that people were not prepared for it. Their clients became confused by its new design that shortly after launching, their mother company, Pepsi, brought original logo back.
Just like Tropicana, many law firms made the same mistake. This huge shift of identity creates confusion and mistrust in the marketplace. As a result, these law firms tend to lose clients.
Why does it happen?
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A huge rebuild and overhaul in identity occur because a firm's advertising team is aiming to create a wonderful, state-of-the-art advertising pieces - but the thing is, they think of the outdated logo or brand identity as a hindrance in achieving their goal. It is fairly understandable that they only want the best for the company that they are working with, but, we really think that creating this drastic decision is seldom good but most of the time bad for the entire organization. Why? Because a highly popular brand has a value that gets wasted. In addition to that, it would really be hard and uneconomical for a company to establish your brand once again to the market after presenting a totally new appearance. Effective brands are built success over a long period of time. Don't fall into the trap of losing it in a blink of an eye.
Moreover, here are some of the most popular mistakes to avoid when changing a brand logo:
1. Letting an amateur design it
There are times that we become dazzled by those websites that offer cheap logo packages. But put in mind that a white-collar business should look professional. Business persons often make the mistake of investing a huge amount of time and money for the property and the equipment needed but forget to match their cost when it comes to their business logo.
The following are the most common reasons why some company logos look unattractive:
* Business owners want to cut costs. They tend to design the company logo by themselves.
* Believes a relative or a friend who claims to be knowledgeable in graphic designing and designs it for free as a favor.
* The task was given to some online websites that offer ridiculously economical yet poor quality designs.
Everything that is written above can give you terrible results. If you let your logo look something like very amateurish, then your business will also look the same way.
On the other side, here are some of the benefits of hiring a professional graphic designer for your logo:
* The output is definitely unique and memorable.
* Reproducing it will not be a problem.
* Your logo will look appropriate to the corporate world because it's professional.
2. Includes stock art
This mistake is common to those business owners who design their own company logo or those unprofessional designers who doesn't have an idea when it comes to copyright laws. Downloading an image from stock vector websites is not prohibited but make sure that you don't do this with your website.
Always remember, a logo is like a content in a guest post: should be unique and original. Aside from that, the license of using that design should be exclusive to you. It may be that if you decided to use a stock vector image, others are already using it all over the world (which makes your logo cheap).
3. Designing based on your taste rather than your client's
Remember the golden rule: Never enforce your own personality in a client work. You can notice this designing mistake often times. Let's say you find a very interesting font (on your part) that you want to use on your next design, we tell you, don't do it. For example, an attractive modern font won't suit in a serious business structure like a law firm.
There are also designers who include their own distinct characteristic or what we call trademark on their designs. Yes, you can be proud of your work. But it is never good to mix your own personality to a client's logo. Stick with the client's requirements.
4. Wrong choice of font
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Choosing the right font when it comes to your logo is the most crucial yet significant decision. Most of the time, a logo becomes an unsuccessful hit due to poor choice of font style.
If you wish to find the best font for your design, you need to match it with your icon style's font. But this is not simple. If you match it too close, those fonts will let's say "compete" for attention. Or if it's not too close, then people will be confused where to focus. The solution? Find the right mix and balance. Bad fonts are the result of not taking the decision serious enough. Some designers just simply choose a certain font and rely on faith.
5. Design has too many fonts
Using lots of font styles in one design is like showing a whole photo album all at once. Each font has a different characteristic, give the viewers enough time to recognize and appreciate it. Seeing too many styles all at once may cause confusion to them.
Use a maximum of two font styles when it comes to logo designing. That's the standard practice. Staying at this number will make the logo more unique and authentic. It also improves brand recognition as it draws attention.
6. Imitate others
This is one of the biggest sins in designing a brand logo and unfortunately, this practice becomes popular nowadays. The main purpose of getting and designing a brand logo is to represent one business. If it is something that you can find anywhere you lay your eyes on, then that no longer represents one business. Copying or imitating other designs will never give you great results.
Takeaway
It is important that even a single thing such as font style should be well thought. Always remember that a great logo will be one of your keys for people to know your brand. In this article, we tackled about how branding and your logo can affect your business (especially a law firm). Do you have any other stories to tell? Share them in our comment box!
Author’s Bio:
Alan Williams is a legal researcher specializing personal injury claims and cases. He writes on behalf of Hughes and Coleman, a law firm that protects people from any form of personal injury. Most of the time, he also uses the web to gather facts about some grounds for this type of claims. Although he is a legal researcher by profession, writing and blogging are also one of his ways to spend his leisure time in a meaningful way.