Welcome to Quality Logo Products’® newest installment of The Right Logo for Your Promo! We start by hand picking the best logo design contests on creative platform 99designs. Our monthly feature then evaluates and compares the good, the bad, and the ugly of competing designs, including the winner! You’ll learn expert design tips and tricks that will set your own logo head and shoulders above the rest.

This month, we’re taking a look at three logos designed for high-end SEO service RANQ. Let’s see how they measure up…

The winner:Design #1

Who should have won: Design #1

Why?

Design #1 is sleek and professional, skillfully matching its appearance with the high-quality services the company offers. It’s also conscious of how the logo may be used by the company in the future. When engraved onto our Rotate USB Flash Drive V.2.0 (4GB), Design #1 remains crisp, elegant, and easy to read.

Design #1: Winning Design

Plan for the Future of Your Company

Why does this logo work? Aside from it being the most polished and professional of our three logos, there’s also something this logo does that the others don’t: Creating solutions for RANQ far into the future. A great logo will be versatile,  adaptable, and able to suit its company at any stage of growth.

As we learned last lesson, it’s a giant mistake for start-up businesses to sacrifice brand recognition in exchange for a standalone initial (lettermark) or illustration (brandmark). The best logo for this situation will feature the company’s name (a wordmark), or a name and symbol together (combination logo). Once a company’s presence grows and becomes well-known, they may change their logo to just a brandmark or lettermark.

Consider how coffee supply giant Starbucks has slowly phased out the presence of their name in their combination logo, leaving just their mermaid brandmark. Even though the logo no longer says Starbucks, we know the mermaid stands as a symbol for the company. Design #1 gives RANQ the ability to establish their name and when they grow create an instantly recognizable brand.

Design #2

Know Your Audience

Fonts with soft edges and round shapes communicate a youthful, playful message that would turn away potential clients seeking the high-end service that RANQ offers. The design’s “a” and “q” characters also look so similar that, at a glance, the company’s name mistakenly reads as “RANA” or even “RONO.” Remember that a logo’s legibility should always be priority number one.

The good news? This design actually has the best “R” logomark of our three competitors. The rising bars leading up to the “R” bring to mind a rising column graph, something that any company would want to see from their SEO results!

Ironically, we’re also looking at the most legible “R” out of all three designs. If it weren’t for the poor stylistic choices holding the rest of this design back, it could have been the winner!

Design #3

Follow the Right Trends

Let’s face it, this logo looks dated! When we take it apart, there are a couple of different elements contributing to its early 2000’s look- the most glaring of them being the strange magenta gradient coloring the text. At the beginning of the 21^st century, the boom in computer technology had even the most well-known companies modifying their logos to suit the new era.

These “modern” logos featured glossy 3D graphics, dramatic drop shadows, and smooth gradients, tossing any fears of being too gaudy out the window. This trend simmered out pretty fast and logos began swapping shine for simplicity. When building your brand, keep in mind that a good logo is effective even without any color or glam at all!

Aside from this logo dating itself back to the time of AOL Messenger and hip boy bands, notice that it also lacks a polished design. In particular, the logo’s stylized “R” doesn’t jive at all with the rounded letters accompanying it. The lack of cohesion is damaging to the brand’s integrity, and the cherry on top is the bad kerning (the individual spacing between the letters) which not only upsets designers but makes any logo difficult to read.

Final Thoughts

Take time to learn from designs of the past, prepare for the future of your business, and consider who exactly is using your services and what they expect! An outstanding logo doesn’t have to be the pinnacle of design, but it will benefit from careful consideration and direction.

Check back next month for the latest installment of The Right Logo for Your Promo, serving up more of the freshest news in logo design and business know-how from Quality Logo Products®!