Logo Issues

One of these logos is for a headphone company, the other a blog for moms. A little tricky to decide which is which when they are next to each other; imagine trying to do so if they weren’t side by side.

A company’s logo, once established, is much more than a picture or set of text; it is layers of brand recognition that is available to a consumer with a single glance. When you see two golden arches you immediately know it is McDonalds with their Big Mac’s, golden French fries, and that McRib sandwich that seems to not want to die. We have thousands of memories, experiences and opinions that are all linked to this single logo.

It is like this for thousands of brands across the world, they build a huge brand that can be fit into one single image. It makes advertising much more compact, we do not need McDonald’s mission statement stamped on any of their ads, or the side of their building, we just need to see those golden arches and we all know exactly what is being offered.

But what happens when your logo looks almost identical to that of another companies? Well for hip hop artist Dr. Dre’s headphone company (Beats by Dre) and Disney’s newly acquired mommy blog (Babble) this has seemed to happen. I came across this by chance; when I thought that the ad banner on my computer was for a new set of headphones, and not a blog that features articles about vegan Thanksgiving meal ideas.

The point I am trying to make is that when your designing a logo, you want to make sure there is nothing out there that you can easily be mistaken for yours. Maybe these two companies have such different markets that this will not be a branding issue, but for me it was. I was not able to see the Babble logo and instantly think, “That’s a website for women to go and learn about healthy foods for their children” or even, “what logo is that?” I was thinking about oversized headphones and west coast hip-hop.