Oh yeah, and don't forget original.
In late 2008 the LogoDesignTeam blog posted something on the subject, of which I will borrow their image to get my point across. These are multinational companies who have logos that resemble, sometimes remarkably so. There are a ton of other ones out there too, just type 'similar logos' into google and you'll see a ton more. The problem is, there are only so many ways of doing something out there, specially when simplicity is key. So rather than trying to think of something unique, it's more of trying to think of something interesting (which has probably been done before, and then finding a new way of doing it.
Another interesting thing is, when companies are in different industries, a lot of people won't recognize if their logos look the same. I mean how many of you realized how similar the Sun Life and Columbia logos' are? But then there is another issue. A logo should, at least to a certain extent, symbolize the industry. So you want it to be different from your direct competition, yet have it symbolize the industry you are all competition with.
Needless to say I have a lot of learning and experimenting to do. As I said in my post last week, I am working on something now which I am hoping turns out good, but is proving quite difficult. I've just put out a second round of 'beta' logos, but I think I'm getting closer to my goal, and I'll have pictures of what I'm doing in my next post, but for now I'll just talk about it.
I'm putting together a logo for the Fraternity of Omicron at Concordia, which required updating. The biggest challenge with this is that, unlike other fraternities which are often represented by three greek letters, they are represented by just the greek letter of Omicron, which is an 'O'. I'm playing with using a typographic logo where their entire name makes up their logo, but that doesn't quite fit their persona. So I'm having a bit of trouble, and I'm trying to go as simple as possible. I want to create a brand for them which will get their name out their, and linked with a simple O, which would eventually be able to be used on it's own.
I'll expand on all this, and how I got from nothing to final product (or whatever draft version I'm in), in my next post.
