Tyler invites you to meet them at a trendy local coffee shop.
You arrive late, hastily stepping through the door and into the soup of 40 conversations fighting to become one, the noise overwhelming. You close your eye’s and listen intently for the unforgettable cackle of Tyler, to no avail.
Flustered, unsure of how to proceed you suddenly remember, Tyler has a killer moustache and a 3ft pink mohawk perfectly perched atop a baby smooth bald bonce.
Opening your eyes, you stick your fingers into your ears to sharpen your sight. A tip you saw on TikTok. Eyelids primed and partially squinting, you scan the room, instantly locking onto Tyler with their top off, chugging decaf cold-brew from a keg like one of those frat boys in American movies.
Your logo needs to stand out, not tell a story
You might be thinking; “What the hell did I just read and how has that got anything to do with a logo?” So let me break the metaphor down and explain.
Your industry is the coffee shop, filled with your competition all nattering about themselves. You walking in the door represents your clients and the challenge of finding who they’re looking for. Tyler is your business or practice, and their pink mohawk and moustache? That dear reader, is your logo, your unique and distinctive calling card. The thing that stands out across the sea of noise.
Your logo is the distinguishing feature that helps your audience identify you in a crowd. It’s the bald head and killer moustache baby.
What is a Logo?
A logo represents you, your practice and your therapy services. A well designed logo can help your audience identify you quickly and confidently. There are different types of logo design but they all have the same job of helping you stand out from your competition.
Short term it can seem indulgent to invest in a well designed logo for your practice. Just consider that you’re going to spend years building a reputation that your logo will ultimately represent. It sounds like an oversimplification, but your logo is the visual mark that people will associate their memories of you with.
If your logo is generic or isn’t distinctive in any way, they won’t have anything to associate those great feelings with, and will struggle to recall or remember when needed, (like a referral) no matter how good the service or experience. A great logo can help you better serve clients.
Here’s a few different types of logo designs with examples:
Brand Mark - Basically a single image or icon like the Apple logo.
Monogram - Typically an acronym using letters like BBC or ITV.
Wordmark - Like a monogram but a word instead of an acronym.
Mascot Mark - A logo created based on a character like Lacoste.
Letterform - “How much for a letter?” Think of the Netflix ‘N’.
Combination Mark - A mix of two types like a brand and wordmark.
How to design a logo
Heck. We’re talking about design. There’s no right or wrong way of doing things technically. It all depends on the industry, niche and a million other factors. It might be that all your competition use a simple clean type for example, so we’d suggest going to opposite way.
And it’s not just about your competition, we put your ideal client at the heart of it, so it would be something that really resonates with them. This often takes us miles from the obvious and ‘safe’ route everyone else opts for anyway.
Here are a few principles we follow:
1. A logo doesn't have to tell a story.
In fact, simplicity is often most effective. Trying to cram how your dog looked you in the eye and inspired you to set up your practice and learn EMDR is awesome. But it might come at the cost of a distinctive logo. There are more suitable and effective places to tell that story.
2. It needs to work small and big.
Sounds obvious but it’s easy to forget that a logo needs to be legible and clear. It might look great on a screen but it’s only when you’re squeezing it into a social media profile pic, knitting it into a scarf or putting it on a high street billboard (even if it’s a Photoshop job) that it’s a problem.
3. What does the ideal client think?
We’re client centric in the way that we build identities and form brands, but we mean YOUR client, not you, our client (does that even make sense?). We put your client at the heart of all our decisions. After all, we’re creating a business asset that will drive growth and attract clients, not a mural for your living room wall.
4. A logo is not a brand
Loading up a logo with lots of meaning, colour, texture and story might seem like a logical way to get your moneys worth. But you’re not ordering a Subway. I understand, I’d do the same. I’d want one of those logo’s that makes the person creating it have to call a colleague to hold it down while they cut it in half. But my friend, we all know what happens when we try to eat.
What most people are looking for when they invest in a logo is to capture that feeling. You know the one. That feeling isn’t contained in a logo, it’s built up over time and now you’ve seen that logo while experiencing good things for so long it simply represents it. No logo evokes a feeling in isolation, it simply represents it. That feeling is called brand, and how we create that is for another blog post. Actually, this one right here.
In the meantime, if your practice needs a mohawk and moustache, check out our packages and a bit more about who we are and what we do for therapists and business doing good.
