The ultimate logo manifesto
Why your logo should be a workhorse, not a wall ornament.
A logo is tiny. Comically tiny compared to the weight it carries. We’re talking about a mark that might live on a social icon smaller than a Chiclet, yet somehow it has to represent your entire company, your values, your personality, and your future ambitions.
The good news? A great logo isn’t born from mystical lightning strikes or tortured artistic angst. It’s born from clear thinking, practical design decisions, and the discipline to keep things simple.
Let’s walk through it—BOT-style.
A logo is a tool, not a tattoo
It doesn’t need to express your entire soul. It doesn’t need to cram in every product, every service, or your company mission statement. Its primary job is to be recognizable, memorable, and functional.
A logo should work on a business card, a billboard, and a ballpoint pen you hand out at trade shows that mysteriously disappear because people love free pens.
If your logo only works when it’s glowing, animated, and the size of a garage door, it’s not a logo. It’s a poster.
Start with black and white
Before you choose colors, effects, or shiny metallic gradients that make your inner magpie giggle, your logo should stand tall in stark black ink on plain white paper.
This is where the weak ideas fall apart.
In this stage we ask questions like:
Does it still read at one inch tall?
Does it still read at one centimeter tall?
Does it look like a logo or like something a Roomba drew while malfunctioning?
If it passes the black-and-white test, you’re on your way.
Lineart logos (solid black and white) help you discover weaknesses in your design and test reproduction at the smallest sizes. A solid lineart is bulletproof and will work anywhere.
Nix the tagline
Including a tagline inside your logo seems tempting, but it locks you into wording you’ll eventually outgrow. Taglines change as your business evolves, campaigns shift, or you discover sharper language over time. A logo needs to be timeless and flexible; a tagline is neither. When you glue the two together, you limit how and where the mark can be used—especially at small sizes, where the text becomes unreadable (see the smallest logo on the right and how the text blurs). Keep the logo pure, and let your tagline live freely where it belongs: in your messaging, not welded into your brand mark.
Color Is spice, not the meal
Once the line art works, color can step in—carefully. Pick one or two strong brand colors that work in spot color printing and digital. That’s it.
Gradients, shadows, bevels, metallic effects… these are “special occasion outfits,” not everyday attire. They should never be required to make the logo readable.
Your logo should still be itself when photocopied on a bargain-bin office copier from 1997.
The thoughtful application of a single color consistency reproduces better than full color image or special effects like drop shadows or emboss. Keeping your palette simple makes it easier for people to lock your logo and its colors together in their memory.
Simple isn’t boring—it’s strategic
People remember simple shapes. That’s not an opinion—it’s cognitive science.
Simple is repeatable.
Simple is scalable.
Simple is timeless.
A complex logo doesn’t show that you’re “unique.” It shows that your designer didn’t know how to edit. And poor editability is the gateway drug to bad branding. If your logo looks at all like it snuck out of a PowerPoint clip-art library, we need to talk.
Your logo must survive every environment
A logo isn’t a homebody. It travels everywhere—Instagram, embroidery, packaging, swag, signage, email signatures, the tiny favicon no one notices but everyone expects.
A great logo works in:
One color
Reverse (white on dark)
Micro scale (16px favicon)
Macro scale (trade show backdrop)
Print, digital, vinyl, embroidery, laser engraving, whatever new medium the future spits out next
If a logo can’t live in the wild, it doesn’t belong in your ecosystem.
Start in vector, export to raster
Creating your logo in vector format (using tools like Adobe Illustrator or CorelDRAW) is crucial because vectors scale infinitely without losing quality. Whether your logo appears on a tiny social icon or a 40-foot banner, it stays crisp, clean, and professional.
Raster programs like Photoshop — and especially non-design tools like Word, PowerPoint, or Paint — produce pixel-based files that blur, distort, or fall apart when resized. A vector logo ensures consistency, print-readiness, and long-term flexibility across every medium your brand will ever touch.
Sometimes the best logo is just your name—done well
Icons are not mandatory. Some brands thrive with nothing but beautifully crafted typography.
A wordmark can be elegant, modern, punchy, classic—whatever fits the personality. When done right, custom lettering is just as iconic as any symbol.
Sometimes simplicity is the flex.
What should a logo cost?
A good logo isn’t a $49 impulse buy — it’s a long-term asset that anchors your brand’s identity, trust, and market presence. Bargain-basement logo sites churn out recycled symbols that get repurposed again and again, which means your “unique” mark could show up on a landscaping company in Ohio and a vape shop in Portland by next Tuesday. That overlap chips away at your individuality and weakens your brand equity before you’ve even begun.
A strong logo takes time: researching the competitive landscape, sketching and refining concepts, choosing typography, testing how the mark reproduces in black and white, small sizes, embroidery, signage, and digital environments. It’s not just drawing a picture—it’s engineering a symbol that works everywhere your business lives.
A professional logo typically costs hundreds to several thousands depending on the scope and number of concepts produced in the initial engagement, but the investment pays off for years. You’re not buying artwork—you’re building the foundation of your brand, and the foundation is the last place to cut corners.
Even the giants overspend on logos. BP’s rebrand cost more than $200 million, and Accenture shelled out around $100 million just to update everything worldwide. Compared to that, small-business logos are pocket change — and they don’t need global rollouts. What matters isn’t matching their budget; it’s about creating a smart, versatile mark that actually fits your brand and works everywhere you use it.
Avoid the “industry cliché starter pack”
Every field has its clichés:
Tech = swooshes
Wellness = leaves and generic yoga silhouettes
Finance = abstract graphs
Consulting = puzzle pieces (why?)
Eco = another leaf
Anything “creative” = random swirls of nonsense
Clichés aren’t evil, but they’re forgettable. We aim for distinctiveness—not deja vu. A strong logo feels inevitable after you see it, not predictable before you do.
Standards are your brand’s seatbelt
A great logo with no usage standards becomes a visual crime scene within a month.
Your identity system should include:
Clear-space rules
Color palette
Type hierarchy
Proper use cases
Improper use cases (everyone needs a “please never do this” page)
Print and digital formats
One-color, reverse, and small-scale versions
These aren’t restrictions—they’re insurance policy for keeping your brand recognizable even when five different people touch it.
A logo isn’t your brand, it is your brand’s doorbell
A logo doesn’t magically make customers love you. That’s your service, product, and experience talking. But a logo does set the tone. And when you get it right, it becomes shorthand for everything you stand for. Over time, that little mark becomes trust made visible.
If you take nothing else away:
Make it simple.
Make it useful.
Make it scalable.
Make it distinctive.
Make it yours.
And make it a logo that can grow with you, not one you outgrow.
That’s the Big Opposable Thumb way.
