Does Your Logo Matter?

Think your logo doesn’t matter? It really does. Your logo is your brand’s identity. Your logo is often the customer’s first impression of your brand and your product. People make assumptions based on your logo, especially if they have no previous experience with your brand.

Case in point example of the Brooklyn Brewery logo, recounted from Entrepreneur Magazine:

For Brooklyn Brewery – which opened its doors in 1987 and is today one of the largest craft breweries in the U.S. — the quality of the beer was, of course, crucial. Brooklyn Lager, still the brewery’s most popular beer by a long shot, was based on an old Brooklyn recipe and thus tethered to the borough’s rich brewing history. But while taste ultimately leaves the most important impression, it doesn’t make the first one. That’s left to the brand’s label.

Fortunately, Brooklyn Brewery got that right, too. Its distinctive but simple label – a cursive white “B” enclosed in a circle of green – has become both an international symbol for craft beer and Brooklyn’s unique flavor of artsy but marketable ‘cool.’ (This recognizable tie to Brooklyn has propelled the brewery’s booming export business, which constitutes more than 40 percent of its sales.)

It could have turned out very differently. Brooklyn Brewery co-founder Steve Hindy knew the weighty import of selecting the right label, but not how to go about finding it. A former Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press, he decided to begin with what he did know how to do: Interviews. “I spoke with about 30 different design firms,” he says. “They showed me their stuff, and I learned that it’s not cheap to get an identity…$40,000 at minimum. We’d budgeted $15,000.”

So Hindy dialed up the office of Milton Glaser, the graphic design legend behind the “I Love NY” logo. A studio assistant answered, frostily informing him that Glaser didn’t get on the phone for just anyone. “It brought out the reporter in me,” Hindy says. For two weeks he called back daily, until the studio assistant relented and connected him with Glaser. “I blurted out our idea and he said, ‘That sounds like fun!’ Come and see me.'” What’s more, Glaser offered to be paid with stock in the company.

A newspaper man, Hindy wanted the logo to include an eagle (Brooklyn Brewery’s original name was Brooklyn Eagle Beer). The first thing Glaser said was “forget the bird,'” remembers Hindy. A week later, the (birdless) logo was unveiled. Hindy had hoped for a design that incorporated quintessential Brooklyn symbols: the Dodgers, maybe, or the Brooklyn Bridge. Instead, he was faced with a cursive white “B” in a green circle. Not a graphic design legend for nothing, Glaser told him to take it home and live with it for a few days.

“Seeing it every morning, it sunk in. It evokes the Dodgers, but it’s not purely nostalgia — it’s fresh and yet it looks like a company that’s been around for a long time. It boiled down all the images I had in my head, and expressed them in an elegant, simple way. I think that’s what great design does. You see that ‘B,’ and you can envision the rest of ‘Brooklyn’ written out. It’s dynamic. It’s in motion. It’s fresh. As Milton said, it has shelf authority.”

And speaking of NYC, how about another iconic logo – the interlocked N & Y logo of the New York Yankees?

Arguably the most famous logo in sports history, the interlocked N and Y of the Yankees’ insignia, worn on cap or T-shirt, is the sign of a true New Yorker, either in the flesh or spirit. The 1909 logo not only predates the white-with-pinstripes home uniform from 1936 (the oldest in Major League Baseball), but even precedes the team name: the Yankees were once known as the Highlanders, after the Hilltop Park ballpark at West 168th Street where they played until 1913.

The logo’s origins are a classic instance of cross-pollination in a city where money, power and style have always mixed. It was a former Irish police chief turned team owner who appropriated the distinctive lettering from an 1877 commemorative medal (honouring a policemen killed in the line of duty) that had been designed by Tiffany & Co, the luxury merchandiser.

In a sport as obsessed with traditions as it is with players’ statistics, the Yankee insignia is prized above all else: Sports Illustrated magazine keeps a running record of celebrities in Yankee regalia. Or, as New York Times reporter Richard Morgan put it: “The [Yankees] logo is just flat-out quintessential, distilled, pure New York.” – The Guardian

Your logo may not be associated with an entire beverage category, or be as instantly recognizable as the NY Yankees logo.  But your logo does much to communicate your brand identity. If you are looking to place your logo on a fragrance that best represents your brand, you should talk to us about it – Contact 3B.