150 – Let’s Give Your Logo a Checkup

You're listening to gift biz unwrapped episode 150.

Today, we are going to be talking all about your logo.

Is it time for revision?

Stay tuned to find out Attention.

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This here is your host gift,

biz gal,

Sue Mon height There it's Sue and I am so glad

you're joining me here today because we are going to do

a checkup of your logo.

You know,

when we start our businesses,

that's one of the first obvious things you want to do.

You want to select your name and your logo.

And if you're already in business,

some of you are brand new.

So this will help you as you're developing your first logo.

But if you've been in business for a while,

I think that we have a tendency to say,

okay, that set that's done.

And then we move on and continue to grow our business.

But now I want to circle back and let's check and

see if your logo is still in line with the business

that you have developed up to this point to get started.

I want to ground us in what the logo is in

the first place.

It's the first visual representation of your company that many prospects

often see.

And for that reason alone,

it's super important,

but it's only one part of your overall brand.

When we talk about a brand overall,

it encompasses every touch point that a customer might have with

you. So it is yes,

the visual in terms of your logo,

but it's also the feel of the business.

When people come into your shop,

when people enter your craft booth,

your promotional materials,

how you interact with them through the sale,

all of this encompasses your overall brand.

And as we've developed our companies,

as you add each layer on,

as you grow the business,

there comes a point where you should go back and check

and make sure that everything is in sync and everything is

aligned. The reason this alignment is so important is because consistency.

So if someone comes in and sees you in your shop,

let's say,

and then they go on and see you on social media.

And then they also purchased your product.

So they have the visual of your product.

All of that should speak with the same vibe.

And this consistency builds trust between you and customer,

because they understand what you offer.

And they understand the feel of the business.

This trust then builds loyalty,

loyalty, built sales,

and we all know what sales does that build your business.

So that's why it's important to come back here and do

a little bit of a checkup of your logo.

Let's make sure that everything is still in alignment.

So the strength and the foundation of your business gives you

all of that trust and loyalty and potential sales to make

your business as great as it can possibly be.

What we'll do now is we will go through and give

your logo a checkup.

And if we see along the way that there's something that

needs changing,

no worries,

because I will also talk through what you need to do

and how to get those changes taken care of.

Let's get started now and go through your logo checkup for

you to be able to easily follow along.

I've created a download.

If you go to gift biz,

unwrapped.com forward slash one 50,

there's a single page download there that you can capture.

And then do your own a little doctor checkup on your

logo in doing this checkup,

we're going to cover four things.

The first is whether your logo is still aligned with your

brand. Feel second is the professionalism of your image.

Third is the consistency of your image.

And finally,

the logo quality.

First off is your logo in line with your brand image,

or I like to call it your vibe,

close your eyes right now,

and think about your business.

What are the three adjectives that you are trying to portray

about your business?

Here's some examples to show you what I mean,

maybe it's lighthearted fun and happy.

Maybe it's serious educational and productive,

or maybe it's a combination of terms.

Maybe it's fun,

educational and playful.

These adjectives are important because they serve as a guiding light

for you with how you present your business.

So now think of these adjectives and then think of your

logo. Do they mesh together?

In other words,

are they in alignment?

Is your logo lighthearted and happy?

And does it give off that feel if those are your

adjectives or is your logo bold and dramatic and super professional

when really your adjectives are more lighthearted and jovial,

if that's the case,

then there's a disconnect.

So this may be something that you're going to want to

look at and adjust.

So point number one,

what are the adjectives that describe your business and then is

your graphic in sync and representing the same feel point number

two, image professionalism.

As I think about logos,

I think about all the different styles that exist.

So one of these would be you,

some logos are initials.

Only some logos are actually the company name in an interesting

font, or perhaps a combination of fonts.

I think those are always interesting where one word is one

font and another word is a different,

but very complimentary font.

And then we also have logos where there is the name

of the company.

And then there is an additional graphic.

And that is the majority of logos.

Actually, most people do like to have the company name and

then some type of a graphic image representing their business.

This is where the problem can arise.

If you have a graphic attached to your logo,

let's take a look at it.

Now, is it an original piece of art or did you

use clip art or some other free stock photography that you

pulled off the web?

Because you thought it looked really nice and complimented the name

of your company,

but it's not original to you.

That means anybody can go online and find that exact piece

of photography,

clip art,

the image that you used and use it for themselves as

well. So it does not make you unique.

I know I get it in the beginning.

You're strapped for money.

Time is an issue because there are so many things that

you want to get going.

So it's all right.

I forgive you.

If you have used some type of publicly accessible image,

but now is the time for change and we'll get to

exactly how you do that.

After we go through the checkup,

not only is that piece of art,

not a unique to you,

we can spot it a mile away.

I'm sure you've seen this yourself.

When you've looked at other people's logos,

you can tell if something is original artwork made just for

their business or whether it's free stock photography or images,

this subtly,

whether you mean it to or not gives an underlying message

about your company.

If somebody doesn't really know you yet,

they're looking for any reason not to purchase from you.

Any explanation of why giving you their money may not be

a good idea.

People will question and evaluate how that flows down into the

rest of your business,

into how you work as a business owner,

the quality of your product and how you would service them

in case there was an issue that came up.

It's not fair.

I know.

And I know everybody who listens to this podcast is a

well meaning and hardworking business owner.

So you don't want an image in your logo where you

may never talk to that,

but they see you online.

Give some type of a message.

That's really not you.

So again,

we need to make sure that that image is professional.

Let's move on now to consistency of your logo,

that refers to all the different touch points of your business.

All the places where a customer can run into you ask

yourself is the logo the same everywhere.

We're talking about websites,

the sign on your brick and mortar store,

printed materials,

business cards,

even the labels that you put on your product images in

emails, it goes on and on,

including all of your social media sites.

So here's the point to look at is the logo exactly

the same in every touch point.

When someone sees you at a craft show,

for example is interested in your product,

makes a purchase and then wants to buy from you again.

So they go on your website.

If that website looks completely different than what they knew you

as when they saw you in person,

that's a disconnect as we were talking about at the very

beginning of this episode,

there is a disconnect when there is not consistency within the

brand, it brings up a question of quality trustworthiness and credibility.

When I talk about the logo being the same,

yes, of course,

there may be different versions.

You might do a black and white logo in one case,

or one of them might be color or they'll be different

sizes. That's okay.

But if the fonts are different from one place to another,

or you have different shades of your logo colors,

maybe you've already changed your logo at some point,

and just never went back and added the updated one to

all your platforms.

This is the checkpoint where you'll take care of all of

that. Finally,

checkpoint number four is your logo quality.

This is where we're looking at your logo for reproduction purposes.

Your logo should be at 300 DPI that's dots per inch.

What this means in the graphic industry is it's going to

produce an image that's very crisp and clean.

Have you ever seen images that are super blurry?

This is particularly important when you're doing printed pieces.

So brochures,

business cards or posters when you take your logo and you

put it online,

sometimes you'll use a lower resolution image just because the uploads

on your website will go faster,

but you want to make sure that you have a logo

format that is in minimum 300 DPI that you have available

to work off of for print.

I also want you to look at your logo for detail.

I have run into so many logos that are so super

detailed. When you try to shrink them down to be on

smaller pieces,

or you try to convert them to black and white,

it's a complete mess.

If you think in your mind's eye of some of the

brands that you love and you think about their logos,

envision how simple they are.

Think of the Nike swish.

Think of Apple clear,

simple, clean,

and crisp.

That's what you're after.

So make sure that your logo is 300 DPI is not

overly detailed and convert very easily to gray scale,

which is the black,

white and in-between colors and has sharp clearly defined lines.

And now,

again, if you're thinking that this is an area where you

could do a little bit of an update in your logo,

we'll talk about what to do about it in a few

minutes, summarizing here,

the four points of your checklist are as follows.

Does your logo fall in alignment with the feel and the

vibe of your business?

Number two is your logo professional in terms of the graphics

that are included with your company name,

if indeed you have an image associated in your logo.

Third is your logo consistent across all platforms,

both online and offline.

And how about the quality of that logo?

Is it crisp,

clean, memorable,

and easily reproducible?

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I'm wondering now how you're feeling about your logo and what

you're thinking.

Just like when you go to the doctor,

if you're not feeling well,

what does he do?

He gives you a prescription and then you walk out and

you do whatever you need to do to get yourself healthy

again. And you move on.

That's exactly what we're going to do here.

Let's talk now about what to do.

If indeed you're feeling like there are some tweaks that need

to be done for your logo.

What do you do?

If you need to change?

I have three points here for you and resources.

So let's go with that.

The first one is,

again, the feel,

let's say that your logo just isn't in alignment anymore with

the feel of your business.

In this case,

you're going through a total rebranding,

which is super exciting and fun.

First step would be once again,

to look at your company name and the fonts that you're

using. Is there something that you want to change there?

Do you want to do a combination of fonts?

There are a ton of online places where you can look

at different types of fonts.

I'll put some of those in the show notes.

So you have a few that you can reference.

You can actually go in there and type in your company

name and then pick different font styles.

And it will show you what it looks like in those

fonts. So that's a fun thing to do,

but I caution you.

You can end up wasting hours in there looking at a

number of different fonts.

So be a little careful about that,

but so you'll want to consider your fonts.

And then secondly,

your colors,

if up to this point,

you really haven't established specific colors that represent your brand now

is the time to do so.

If you're not in the graphics world,

you may or may not know about this already.

There are certain numbers that reference different colors,

and these are called hex color codes.

It starts with a pound sign,

and then there are six letters or numbers after that.

These numbers match specific colors that you can then use when

you're creating things online,

you can give them to graphic artists so that they're able

to design for you.

And it's really important for you as a company to have

specific colors that match your brand.

For example,

here at gift biz,

I have a very specific yellow that I use.

That's important because when I print business cards or when we

do something online or when I'm doing graphics for emails there,

aren't different shades of yellow all over the place.

It's one specific yellow,

a resource that I'll give you here.

There's actually a couple.

If you go online,

you can just Google hex color picker.

It's H E X and there you can go and look

at all different types of colors and you'll actually get the

hex codes right there too.

You'll see what I mean when you go over there.

The other thing that you can do,

if you are on Chrome is get an extension called color

Zilla. And this is really cool.

It's C O L O R Z I L L a.

What this allows you to do is go to any website

online and use that little extension,

and it will bring up all of the hex codes for

those pages.

So let's say there are a couple of brands that you

really like you to say,

Oh my gosh,

I really liked that shade of pink that so-and-so uses in

their brand.

You can use color Zilla,

go over to their website,

click on color Zilla.

And it's going to tell you exactly what colors they're using

there a nice way to then merge that into your brand.

And here,

I probably don't need to say it,

but I will.

Anyway, just for peace of mind is you don't want to

be copying other people's brands,

but you can also pick up the hex colors are available

for everybody,

right? So you might find a pink that you really like,

but you're going to merge it in with your own color

of teal or whatever.

Again, you don't want to be copying people's brands because you

want to be unique.

You want to be your own person and your own company.

So if you're going to go through a total rebranding of

your logo,

you'll be thinking about your fonts and then also decide on

your hex number,

color codes.

At this point,

you might be saying,

Oh my gosh,

this is such a huge project.

I do not want to be tackling this myself.

Well, you don't need to.

There are a lot of very economical ways that you can

get your logo redone with original artwork without having to break

the bank.

And without having to spend a ton of time,

yes, you can do it yourself.

You can also go to online resources that can help you

with logo creation.

Several of these are Fiverr 99 designs.

You could hire someone from Upwork and they could help you

create a logo.

Another option is to look right in your community.

How about in your high school in the arts department?

You know,

these kids are so smart these days.

I bet you could hire someone in high school who could

create a logo for you.

That would be awesome.

And I don't see you having to pay more than $50

for logo creation in that way.

And if you get a senior going into graphic arts in

college, that would be a great thing for them to be

able to use on their college applications.

Another option is through your chamber of commerce.

All of us have graphic artists within our communities and just

out in networking.

If you make the announcement that you know,

you're looking for someone to help you redesign your logo,

I'm quite sure you'll be able to find somebody in your

own area to help you along with that.

So don't feel like this is an insurmountable task.

The benefits of having a high quality logo far outweigh the

time and the investment that you'll make in getting this done,

right? Whether you decide to do it yourself or you hire

out, I just want to bring up a few design cautions

here for you,

as you're looking at any changes that you make to your

current logo,

or if you're going through a complete redesign,

here are three things that I want to make sure you

look at in your final review before you're all done.

Number one,

is it now clean,

crisp, and clear,

go back and listen to the conversation as we were going

through the checklist and make sure your logo passes the test

also, is it going to look good in black and white?

Finally, you'll want all extensions of your logo to be available.

If you go with an outside designer,

this is something they should naturally be giving you.

So if they've created your logo in Photoshop or illustrator,

you're going to want the extensions for those graphic creation programs.

So for Photoshop it's dot PSD and for illustrator it's dot

AI, you'll also want the extensions for printing.

So you're going to want your logo in dot P N

G dot JPEG and dot G I F if you don't

know what I'm talking about here,

no worries.

These are just different types of logo files.

It's your same logo,

but it's in different versions.

It's kind of like getting your favorite top in pink and

red and the print that you see it all originates from

the same pattern.

It's just different versions of the same thing.

This is super easy for a graphic person to do it.

Just, they just take the original artwork and then put it

into the different versions,

but make sure you get all of those before you pay

your bill.

Once you've got your new logo,

then you're going to want to go and put it up

everywhere in the download that I referenced earlier,

I made a list of different places.

You want to make sure that you make adjustments with your

logo and yes,

it will cost you a little bit of money to get

new business cards and brochures.

And if you need to do that over time,

that's fine.

But you just want to make sure that you get it

taken care of within a reasonable timeframe.

Because once again,

it's the consistency that's so important.

So there you have it,

all the information for your logo checkup and the free download

link. Again is gift biz,

unwrapped.com forward slash one 50.

We've covered all the points that you'll want to look at

as you're analyzing your logo,

and then what you should do.

If you need to do some revisions,

as we close out here,

I just want to remind you why you want to do

a logo checkup in the first place.

And that is to make sure that you are presenting the

best image you possibly can out into the market,

especially when people run into your company online or somewhere where

you're not available.

So you're not able to interact with them.

This happens all the time since we have online media now,

right? And the point is you want your logo to be

doing the best work it possibly can in terms of representing

your business consistency with a beautiful logo builds trust,

trust builds loyalty,

loyalty builds,

sales and sales will help you grow your business.

Thank you so much for joining me today.

And if you are interested in sharing your logo with me,

I would love to see it.

You can do so by just jumping over to the show

notes page at gift biz,

unwrapped.com and attach it in the comments section right below the

show. And if you'd ever like to get in touch with

me, I'm available through email.

Just go ahead and send me your message to Sue at

gift biz,

unwrapped.com. Bye for now.

And I look forward to seeing you again next week.

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