In this episode
In this episode of the Might Finsights podcast, Rory Holland and Dan Ocock discuss the intricacies of logo design and branding. They explore the importance of creating a meaningful logo that resonates with the audience, the design process, and the significance of research in developing a brand identity. Through case studies of well-known brands like Lloyd’s and Monzo, they highlight the role of humor and uniqueness in branding. The conversation emphasizes the need for a cohesive brand identity and the steps involved in creating a memorable logo that stands out in a crowded marketplace.
Key takeaways
- A logo is just one part of the brand ecosystem.
- Memorable logos are often simple and clever.
- A cohesive brand identity strengthens market presence.
- Striving for uniqueness is essential in branding.
Transcript
Rory Holland (00:02.231)
Hey, my name is Rory. I’m the founder and CEO at CSTMR.
Dan (00:18.146)
Hi there, my name is Dan and I’m the brand strategist and the brand identity designer at CSTMR.
Rory Holland (00:23.659)
Welcome to the Wealth and Worth podcast, episode five. Dan, you want to describe this one for the listeners?
Dan (00:32.958)
Yeah, I can do first up for episode five, Rory. I actually can’t believe we’ve bagged five. First of all, kudos to us. This just kind of draws the mini series, if you like, to an end. So this episode is all about that finishing touch, the memorable brand logo that you want for your business. What’s that got in it? And what is that all about? What makes a good logo? You know, there’s plenty of them out there.
Good ones, bad ones. How do we design one that, not only do we fall in love with, but one that means a lot, one that will resonate and has all those qualities and hallmarks of a logo that should stand the test of time.
Rory Holland (01:21.567)
Yeah. And, design, you know, how design is just one piece of it, but I think you said a good word that means and what does it mean for someone and how do we, how do you design a brand? And when we’re talking about the finishing touches here, kind of bringing it all together in an actual logo or identity design, how do we create a design that means something to people?
Dan (01:47.806)
Well, before we get deep, let me just, I guess, frame for people where that logo sits within a brand. So there’s a common mistake with people that when they hear the word brand, they think of their logo as their brand. So I need, I need a new brand design. And that’s a term that I hear. Oh, we hear quite a bit. I’m sure you have as well.
And that logo that they are thinking of as their brand is just one part of that brand ecosystem, if you like. We talked in previous episodes Rory about the logo being the face of the brand and we’ve compared the brand, our brand to a person. And that’s what I want to make sure that people understand on this episode because we’re talking about a logo, it’s just that piece.
The key part, that face of a person, the face of the brand. So when you say a person’s name, you think of their face. When someone says your business name, you need them to visualize that logo subliminally. Do you come across it where people get that confused between, you know, that confusion between this is my logo, but it’s part of my brand.
Rory Holland (03:07.559)
Oh, sure. Yeah. And I think in prior episodes, we talked about
skipping steps and going right to design, but skipping foundational work and actually creating the brand strategy first. So we won’t want to go on to all that today, but yeah, indeed. I hear that all the time.
Dan (03:30.546)
Yeah. And when you have a business, whether it’s existed, you know, six months, six years, what we’ve covered in those previous episodes, go back and listen if you haven’t the steps that you should have gone through to define why your business exists should be reflected somewhat or could actually could is probably a better word than should, could be reflected through a cleverly designed logo.
And what do I mean by clever Rory? Well, there’s different ways to interpret that through design. So a clever design could be a visual approach, a style. As designers, we could use things like negative space to kind of knock out a section of a logo and make it look part of something else. A great example would be a letter A, you know, in the letter A capital, you have that triangle, which is knocked out in the middle. If you were designing a logo that needed a letter A, you can use that space to be clever and make sure that it looks like an A, but kind of looks like something else. We were chatting just before and we had a good example. I actually completely fluked it by saying the work, the letter A, but we, we’ve got a brand, haven’t we Rory, that we did with.
Rory Holland (04:46.347)
Mm-hmm.
Dan (04:55.47)
I don’t know if you’ve got the screen to bring it up and show folks.
Rory Holland (05:00.319)
Yeah, I do. Let’s talk about that one. Here we go.
Dan (05:07.694)
Brilliant. And so this, I mean, when I talk about a clever logo, this is an example. So advice by Athena, take the two A’s of advice and Athena and tie that into what we’d worked on with them as in terms of their brand strategy and the fact that they are that advisor, that guide, that if you like senior figure, the owl, the Greek terminology. Athena had an owl that followed her, sat on a, I don’t know if it was a shield, I can’t remember now, but bringing that owl and the two A’s together to create a logo. And that’s one way that you can be clever with a logo. We’ve got good, we’ve got, um, good reception with this one, didn’t we? Rory’s been well received.
Rory Holland (05:58.271)
Absolutely. Yeah. And some success for this business.
Dan (06:03.442)
Yeah. So when I talk about being clever with a logo, being visually clever is one way that we can do that. Obviously we’ve got that center. I’m kind of pointing at the screen, but we’ve got the centers of those A’s as the eyes of the owl. And at the same time, the points of the A are actually the ears as well. And then the divide, but that tiny little beak of the owl as well. So we create something that at first glance people might say, I really liked the owl for your logo. It’s really clever. I like that. But let’s say five minutes or a conversation later, or even a month later, you come out and say, it’s two A’s. I get it. And it’s in those moments that a kind, that a logo makes an impact on someone’s mind and it stays in their mind. Do you know what I mean?
Rory Holland (06:57.211)
Mm-hmm. I do. Yeah, absolutely. And so how does one arrive? Like what is the process that folks go through that you go through with our clients and financial brands to arrive at something meaningful and memorable, like advice by Athena.
Dan (07:20.706)
We lock ourselves in a room and we just get creative. No, we don’t. There’s a number of stages. I wanted to highlight a few of them to folks, just to sort of, I mean, if you’re doing your own logo design in-house or if they’re listening and thinking, well, what do they do? One of the first things, Rory, is just to do a bit of research and have a look at what is out there in the marketplace. And perhaps in marketplace is a little bit too specific.
I say that because one thing you don’t want to do is create a logo like everyone else’s, or that’s my opinion. So when I say research, we could be researching a different niche that would give us the feeling or a way to express ourselves in the way that brand needs. So if we have.
We’ve got a couple of more examples that I’m going to ask you to pull up in a second, but there’s two banks that I can think of that go about presenting their logo in a completely different style. The two banks are UK, well, one’s a UK brand, it’s Lloyds Bank and the other bank is an online bank called Monzo. And when I was talking then about research.
If I’m researching bank brands, they could more than likely appear in some of my searches and they are, you know, looking at them going, well, they’re completely different, but if we look at, and we’re researching more of a, maybe that word FinTech comes into it, but the brands that are younger and sit there as these up and coming vibrant, you know, I don’t know any more buzzwords than that, but the fact, the brands and the banks that are much newer compared to Lloyds, which is a very traditional brand, we get two different ways that we can look at, you know, span out from those.
If you like, we could look at more modern. We could look at more classic, something that’s got much more heritage embedded in it. I don’t know if you want to bring those up, Rory, just to kind of show people what I was rabbiting on about there.
Rory Holland (09:30.315)
Mm-hmm.
Rory Holland (09:35.539)
Yeah, you want to look at Lloyds?
Dan (09:37.73)
Yeah, let’s show Lloyds first.
Rory Holland (09:42.583)
Yes, I’ve got Lloyds website here.
Dan (09:46.326)
And as a brand, you know what, I don’t actually know how long they’ve been around, but I took my first account out with these guys years back and they must have been around for years since then. And that’s what they rely on is that brand heritage and that horse, the black horse has always been their logo. And what they do is they bring that logo to life.
So in the UK, we’ve got various adverts that people will have seen on TV and that horse is a real black horse and it’s running along a beach or going through a field. And what happens is there is an assimilation between trust and the bank and that black horse and, so bringing that back to the logo when you have a logo like that and you know, even at the size that I’m looking at it on my screen, it’s tiny and yeah, I can’t really see all the detail on there, but the pose.
The fact that I now know what that horse looks like for Lloyds, it’s, you wouldn’t need to put that with the word in Lloyds bank for me to know that this is Lloyds bank. And that’s actually an important point before we go on to Monzo, because I want to say when designing a logo, one of the tests that you should be looking at is, could this be recognisable without any wording. So could someone take that icon and say, or eventually say, Oh yeah, that’s, that’s Lloyds bank’s logo.
So, an interesting one, let’s bank.
Rory Holland (11:31.007)
And you mentioned Monzo. So you want to look at the Monzo card. Is that right?
Dan (11:37.674)
Yeah, as contrast, they’re a bank, but they’re online. And you’ll see with this approach that their logo is completely different.
Rory Holland (11:50.295)
Yeah, let’s take a look at Monzo.
Rory Holland (11:55.339)
Make money easy.
Dan (11:57.458)
Yeah. But look, we’ve got to, I mean, the color palette straight away. I don’t want to go into colors, but totally fresh, completely vibrant colors. They’ve got up in the top left, their word mark. So that’s just a plain text written version of Monzo. Now they do have a stylized letter M. There we go. You can see on the circle for the app on the left there. That’s a small version, but it’s such a bold, colorful logo that’s now been on my phone for don’t know how many years. And again, that’s now become synonymous as Monzo’s identity for me. I know what that looks like. They’ve now taken that logo and stylized it in different colors for different tiers of bank accounts or special edition cards. But each time the M stays the same or has, you know, the same structure so that people know.
Oh, it’s definitely mons then. I feel like we went kind of on, I went on a little bit of a tangent and a little bit of rant about those two brands, Rory, but I just wanted to show them to you because stemming back to where it started, which was talking about doing your research, I just wanted to make sure that when people do their, or when we’re doing the research, it’s important that it’s research in the right place and in the right direction. Cause you can go off and get these two totally different results, right?
Rory Holland (13:26.087)
Yeah, and there, I have another one that I wanted to share Dan, if you could help me kind of unpack this one a little bit. And it’s one that you may not know there and in your neck of the woods, where I think we talked about today, it’s a hot one for you, 82 degrees Fahrenheit, here in Texas three figures is kind of what we see throughout the summer. So it’s going to be another 105 degree day. So there’s a fan brand.
Dan (13:30.859)
Yeah, go for it.
Rory Holland (13:55.051)
That makes me chuckle. And although we’re not talking about finance, but we are talking about keeping people cool, even at, at gyms and other facilities that might have big areas that need to have air moved, there’s a brand I wanted to show you that again, kind of makes me chuckle and in thinking about this episode that we’re going to record, what made me chuckle?
Dan (14:14.03)
Come on then, let’s have a look.
Rory Holland (14:22.727)
Was actually learning for myself that big ass fans logo is indeed a big ass.
Dan (14:35.098)
Yeah, all right, okay, this is good. It’s interesting, let’s say that for a start. Yeah, you’re right, I don’t know the brand. I think you quickly showed me where they put these fans. Yeah, they were huge, they were huge fans. They were, they were big ass fans. But it’s an interesting logo from the point of view that your brain goes to expecting a fan.
Rory Holland (14:47.404)
This fan would take up the size of your whole office probably. Yeah.
Dan (15:03.902)
Or something air related or anything, but a donkey or an ass. If you want to, I don’t know if they are different in breed or whatever, but brilliant because do you know what? I’m probably going to remember that logo.
Rory Holland (15:18.401)
Yeah.
Dan (15:20.394)
And that’s a great example of taking something literally. And if your brand has been planned right and the strategy is there, I mean, I don’t, I haven’t delved into their brand, but I would hope that level of his humor in a way comes across in different touch points in their marketing. Whether they, I would imagine they’re really bold as a brand, they’ve got some big solid lines. They’ve got that humor there. And so, yeah, I would hope that would come across and in which case it would be, it’d be a perfect and well thought out brand for me.
Rory Holland (16:01.343)
Yeah, it’s a little tough to have a name of a company called big ass fans and not have, there’s so many directions you could go as far as bringing an identity to that, to that. So thanks for letting me share that.
Dan (16:08.872)
Yeah. I also, and I actually noticed just before you closed that the, at first it looks like a kind of run of the mill font, but they’ve stylized some of those cross sections of the A’s and I just, they had a curved bottom and I wondered if, or I wanted to believe that those were the same shape as the actual fan blades on the ceilings that they fit. But it was like the bottom, like the bottom of the cross section on the, on the A look, yeah, those A’s.
Rory Holland (16:39.063)
Mm-hmm.
Dan (16:42.722)
So I don’t know what a fan looks like, but I hope it’s the same shape as that.
Rory Holland (16:46.851)
Yeah, it’s interesting enough. It does have, I don’t know, call it like a sweep of sorts. That’s, I don’t know that it’s proprietary, but it does have certain sweeps to the fan that maybe it was designed to move air better than other fans, but you can’t miss a big ass fan when you’re in a gym and you can, or an outdoor facility that has these giant fans on the ceilings here in Texas.
If it’s a big ass fan compared to another, you can’t miss it because they also, this color yellow and black gets applied into the actual design of the fans. And we’re seeing, we’re actually seeing them in, in other local stores like Home Depot and Lowe’s, which are local retail outlets for home improvement here in the States. Yeah. So I just want to share that because that’s one that I’m thinking about today. I wish I had one of those in my office.
Dan (17:23.031)
Yeah, yeah. That’s brilliant. Yeah. Really good.
It’s really good. Yeah. I like that example. Thanks for sharing that on Rory. To put it on, or kind of kick onto this, the next steps or what we do when we’re looking at creating a new logo or even developing an existing one, pens and paper, Rory, that’s the next step. Get a sketch pad out. That’s what I like to do.
I’ve got scribblings all over the place. And sometimes a designer’s brain just needs those quick movements of pen to go, oh yeah, that line could join there or that shape could link to that one. Don’t have to be a finished piece of art. Just something that makes my brain go, that’ll look good. That’ll stand out. Let’s get it into a design package and start to see if it’ll work. So start with a sketch pad. I’m probably sounding more like I’m advising a designer, but it’s what we do.
You know, when we’re doing new brands and existing brands, sketch them out and talk through stuff. And once I said, once we’ll get something or that I think is viable, I generally will only work in black and white to begin with. So a lot of early designs is just shapes or knocking something out of, of something else to see how it works. Cause if I can get a good shape that’s recognisable, that’s black and white, I’m fairly confident once I start to add color that I can do it in a controlled way and it’ll be bold and have that presence if you like.
So that I mean those are the those are the next few stages that we would go through. I think when you get something that you go this is the one, which can take a little while there’s no kind of written rule of you know it’ll take a day.
Sometimes we’ve been back to the drawing board with stuff. It doesn’t work or we don’t feel that it’s right. And you have to work through that. That’s part of that design process. Because I think one thing that’s important when you design this new logo, it’s got to feel relevant. There’s probably the next point that I wanted to bring up.
Rory Holland (19:53.399)
for sure.
Dan (20:08.538)
And when I say relevant, I mean that it has to be relevant to all, all the ideas, the values, and the activities that it’s going to represent.
Rory Holland (20:19.093)
Mm-hmm.
Dan (20:20.814)
So everything that you will have been through with us on, in terms of strategy, this isn’t plucked out of thin air, you know, and I hinted to it with the Athena one, just scratching the surface there of that owl and why the owl was integral. You want that with your logo. And that’s another element of that, of being clever with design, Rory. So making sure you can tell a story with the logo.
Now that’s important to people, especially a financial business, because let’s face it, it’s not an exciting subject to talk about that sector, but if you’ve got some story that, you know, why that business exists and what you stand for and your logo represents it, you’re going to have something to talk about with people.
Rory Holland (21:19.255)
Mm-hmm.
Well, whether you’re an established brand, which brings history and different perspectives and different personalities when you have executive teams and boards potentially that you’re working with to develop a refreshed or refined identity, or you’re talking about an early stage startup or a middle market company that might want to improve its identity to really go to the next level.
Yeah, I think you’re right. Like there’s so much opportunity to bring interest and relevance. And a couple of words that come to mind for me are credibility and trust. So we talk about unique and standing out and like advice by Athena or big fans, like on the other side of it or, you know, Lloyds Bank it’s been around for many, many decades.
There’s a credibility and trust that comes out through an identity and through the experiences people have with the brand. And we talked a little bit about that in prior episodes in building, developing the strategy and as we get to a visual identity, there’s a lot of work that has to be done to make sure it’s cohesive and consistent and does achieve what we want it to achieve, which is to represent the brand in such a way that really builds relationship with the market in an appropriate way and helps financial client, our clients stand out in the marketplace because there are so many financial brands out there that look and feel the same.
Dan (22:59.198)
Yeah, absolutely. There’s actually two things that I want to add on to what you just said there. When there are so many other brands out there within that sector, the kind of fifth point that I was about to bring up, you know, piggybacks on really well is creating a logo that it is easy to remember. So making sure that you don’t overcomplicate it.
Making it memorable. So I think the big ass fans one was a really good example. I’m going to remember it. And it has that potential to stay in my mind, you know, no matter what else I see out there, it just resonates and just kind of hits a mark with me because of its humor and its boldness and so having that logo that is easy to remember, very, very important. The other point that I wanted to say.
Off the back of the logo is understanding when we’re designing that logo, having the foresight to think about what else will partner with that logo. Because there are a lot of other visual elements creatively that will form, as we’d call it, that brand identity. Anything that is in the marketplace. So what am I talking about? I’m talking about is there an accompanying pattern that needs to work with your logo? Is there going to be a theme for that brand? You know, Lloyds have got a very distinct green, they probably trademarked the green, I wouldn’t be surprised if not, but that horse is one of their, their kind of visual cues and that is carried through most of their materials.
On the flip side, Monzo, you know, they’ve got a much, much more different approach, but they’ve got vibrant colors that kind of reappear as their theme throughout and it’s no good designing a logo in isolation. So going out there and creating this really fantastic, simple, um, icon that’s got creative use of negative space.
But then really the rest of the brand is so intricate and delicate and really flows smoothly, it’s not going to work when it’s paired up with everything. And so when you’re designing a logo, we’ll often do this is we’ll have early developments of what else is going to accompany that logo, what’s going to make that logo sing, what’s it going to
Rory Holland (25:36.227)
Mm-hmm.
Dan (25:51.542)
You know, how is it going to be set on different backgrounds?
There’s a whole host of other creative elements that need to partner up with a logo that will help to make it a memorable icon or a logo, if you like.
Rory Holland (26:07.871)
Yeah. There any quick examples of that? Like maybe describing a logo, but then what accompanies it? What types of things?
Dan (26:15.738)
I’m trying to think the good example, the best example for us is Access One, which I forget which episode it was in. That brand, not only did it have a very clean, bold logo, the accompanying style guide we worked up created a pattern that people, if they’re working with the brand would allow them to use this pattern shape to create graphics of their own, depending on what they were producing, that would reflect that identity.
So it’s hard for me to describe without showing an example. But imagine abstract shapes that we’ve given them, I guess, the template to create brand materials with, and that means that things are consistent.
Rory Holland (27:09.278)
Mm-hmm.
Dan (27:12.31)
Consistency come up in it in an earlier episode, but that’s the best example off the top of my head where a logo was designed, but the accompanying style guide really bolstered it and really gave it that coherent feel that we wanted.
Rory Holland (27:29.351)
Yeah, that might be one that I will teaser here that we do a separate episode to unpack some of the style guides because that’s what comes to mind for me as a person who’s been able to follow the process, the way you describe it and I have visual cues in my own mind, I can go to thinking about different brands we’ve done it for the way that you’ve sat with, with scratch pad and then put together ideas with what’s going to be, how it’s going to be accompanied. And then how you bring it together in a presentation is what comes to mind that we may want to share with the listeners, a few real world examples. Cause when you see them all, all the pieces come together in an actual logo like, oh, it makes sense. So that might help.
Dan (28:17.35)
Yes, yeah, definitely. I think that’s a good shout. Watch out for that episode once we get that one planned, but that’s a good idea. And with the Access One brand, Rory, the final point that I really wanna bring in, or one of the last points is when we have, when we’re designing a logo and when we design these identities, strive to be different is what I would say. And so with Access One, that’s what they wanted and that’s what we did with them.
I don’t have to go into that as a specific example now, but with any logo, if you can be different, then that’s a huge advantage.
Just, you know, in terms of doing it the right way, big ass fans, they go. They are the different. They’re straight, yeah, they were different in how they approached it. I’m trying to now wrap my brain with other different brands. Can’t think of any off the top of my head, but it’s true. And you can be memorable in your own way. That’s the important factor here with a brand and a logo.
Rory Holland (29:06.851)
That’s right.
Dan (29:26.922)
It’s yours. We need to make it yours and understand what’s going to make it look and feel, you know, on point for your business. Right.
Rory Holland (29:36.979)
Absolutely. Yes. Good stuff, Dan. That was fun unpacking this kind of last, this last step in designing a memorable. Logo. And, yeah, for sure.
Dan (29:48.766)
Yeah, everyone likes a logo. Well, they brought a game out, the logo game. Don’t know if you played it. It, well, it’s really clever. So you take a logo and you adjust a key, a little part of that logo. So you might take the words away or you might take a chunk of it away and you still have to guess what that company is.
Rory Holland (29:55.083)
Right. I haven’t played it.
Hmm. There we go. We can record an episode of us playing the logo game and then maybe watch me win or lose, I don’t know, chances are lose to a guy like you. All right. Well, thank you, Dan.
Dan (30:15.722)
And it’s amazing, yeah.
Yeah, I love it. I love it. Yeah, we’ll do it. We’ll see. Good.
Thank you Rory, it’s been good.
Rory Holland (30:33.075)
Yeah, and stay tuned. We’ll be sending out some information on this current episode with some show notes for you guys to take a look at with some of the brands that we discussed and then be on the lookout for details for our next episode coming soon.
Dan (30:47.598)
Absolutely. Brilliant. Thanks Rory.
Rory Holland (30:50.519)
Thanks, Dino.
