5 and a Half Ways to Test if you Have a Strong Logo
I’ll be honest, I’m a bit of a brand snob and think way too much about logos. It’s my job. I probably think about other people’s logos far more than they do themselves. So many of the logos are just bad. It makes me nuts, knowing people are out there in the world right now just walking around with no clue that they have an embarrassing logo. Or worse, they know their logo isn’t great but they feel stuck with it or choose to do nothing about it.
To help you out, here’s 5 and a half ways to test if you have a strong logo.
The Colour Test
A logo that only works in full colour on a white background is a fragile logo. Your mark should hold up in black and white, one colour, duotone, and in reversed (light on dark) versions. If you lose all identity when it goes monochrome, it’s too dependent on colour effects. A strong logo is versatile: whether embossed, printed, photocopied, or laser-etched, it still reads cleanly and recognizably.
If your logo uses gradients or transparency, you had better be aware of its limitations in monochrome, reversed or overlaid on a photo. If this sounds like your logo you may want to read up on the most important ways to build a strong brand.
The Feel Test
Your logo has to evoke the right emotion, tone, and values for your brand. A logo for a toy line for toddlers would feel much different than one for a brand of artisanal pasta. If your logo feels like something else (too stiff, too playful, too corporate), it’s misaligned. The “feel” has to match your voice, your audience expectations, your brand personality.
When Xanthic creates a logo design brief we use sets of opposite adjectives to gauge feel. We give the feel a score between the two adjectives out of 5. 1 being the left extreme, 3 being a middle balance between the two or neutral, and 5 being the right extreme. So a score of 4 between Serious and Fun would be somewhat fun, but not downright silly. The logo score should match your brand score. Test your logo to see if it matches your intended feel.
The Scale Test
How small can your logo shrink before it’s illegible? How big can it get before it becomes pixelated? Shrink it down to favicon size (16×16 px), then blow it up as large as possible, is it still clear and legible? A strong logo is legible and recognizable at both extremes. No details that fuzz into a mess when reduced, no breakage or weird artifacts when enlarged. Too many details, fine lines or small gaps will disappear when shrunk down. If your logo can’t scale up it’s probably because you don’t have it made as a vector.
The Function Test
Beyond being pretty, your logo has a job to do. It needs to be flexible to be a jack of all trades. That means it works as a watermark, as a social icon, as a rubber stamp, or as part of a header. If you find yourself designing dozens of workaround variants just so it “fits” in certain places, your base form isn’t functional enough or it lacks a flexible system.
The solution is having a responsive logo kit which is actually just multiple versions of a logo that can work in various formats and sizes for both digital and print.
Responsive Logo Versions:
- Primary: Your full, master logo that usually includes the full wordmark and symbol together.
- Secondary: Horizontal or stacked versions. Depending on your layout, you’ll need alternate orientations
- Icon / Brand Mark: A simplified version featuring just the symbol or a single identifying shape. Great for Website Favicons and App Icons.
- Wordmark Only: The logo text by itself, without the symbol.
- Submark or Monogram: An even smaller, compact version that is often initials or a cropped symbol variation.
- Black Monochrome and Reverse versions: All the above versions should have a single colour version in both black and white. These are super helpful and offer a brand a lot of design flexibility.
- Animated: This is usually an animated version of your primary logo. These are prevalent with movie production companies. Think of Netflix’s stripy and colourful animated logo during the “Tadum!”.
The Swag Test
If you plaster your logo on a t-shirt, embroider it on a hat, or silk-screen it on merch, will it translate? Fine gradients, extreme detail, over-complex shading are some of the biggest tests for a functional logo. The best logos are ones you could stitch with thread stitches or block print with minimal colours. If it survives those constraints, it’s strong. The Nike “Swoosh” may be the all-time strongest logo in this test. It’s also why Apple beats Samsung in the brand game.
One of the first logos I ever designed was for a video game I worked on. The logo looked great on screen and on the website, but it did not translate well when we shrank it down and embroidered it onto polo shirts. *Shudder*, lesson learned.
Emotional Test
This is the sneaky test and different from the function test. It’s about being memorable and connecting with people. Show your logo cold to someone in your target audience, don’t preface it, wait five minutes, and ask them to sketch or describe it. If they remember something like shape, element, colour sliver, name link, that tells you you’ve got a mark that lingers. If nothing sticks, it might be smart, but not memorable.
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