Your logo is useless.

The observation

Let's start with what can be checked, before I tell you what I think of it. Just look around you, on your street and on your phone.

A logo is worth working on when you have a brand

There are cases where a logo deserves real time and money. They're the brands whose mark is part of the product: fashion, cars, luxury, the big global names.

There, the logo is worn. It's stitched, engraved, mounted on a bonnet. It's worth something because millions of people recognise it and because what it evokes can be resold.

And let's be honest for a second: that isn't your situation, and it isn't mine. I have no illusion that the head of a global group is reading this article to decide on their brand guidelines. That isn't pessimism, it's realism.

Look at the ones you know by heart

Try the exercise, it's instructive. List the logos you can recognise instantly.

In the overwhelming majority of cases, it's text. A name set in a particular typeface. Sometimes a single letter. Sometimes a geometric shape so simple you could draw it from memory in ten seconds.

No gradients, no complicated symbol, no illustration. A word, a colour, and that's it.

To be clear, I'm not saying it's easy to produce. Arriving at something simple that holds takes more work than piling on effects, and that's true everywhere, not just on a logo. I'm saying the result itself is simple.

What you need isn't a logo

Here's the point almost nobody states properly.

What makes a business recognisable isn't its mark. It's a whole, and the logo is only one piece of it:

• two or three colours, always the same, everywhere;
• a typeface, held on the site and on your documents alike;
• a consistent way of framing and treating photographs;
• a tone of writing that doesn't shift from one place to another;
• and a mark, yes, but arriving after all the rest.

A business with a coherent identity and an unremarkable logo is perfectly recognisable. A business with a magnificent logo and no coherence isn't at all.

What large organisations spend on logos

A word on the rebrands you see in the press, the ones costing hundreds of thousands for a result everyone finds ugly.

Sometimes there are real reasons behind them: dozens of touchpoints to harmonise, legal constraints, a brand to protect. And sometimes, let's say it, a budget that had to be spent and a decision that needed signing off.

Notice what happens every single time, too: everyone finds the new logo terrible. Without exception. If general opinion were reliable, no logo on earth would ever have been approved. Which is proof enough that we're in pure subjectivity.

A business with a coherent identity and an unremarkable logo is recognisable. The reverse never is.

The problem isn't the logo

I need to be precise here, because this is where the subject becomes useful. I have nothing against logos, and even less against the people who draw them.

The fifteen euro shampoo

Selling a crafted logo to a business that's just starting is selling premium shampoo at fifteen euros a bottle to someone who is bald.

Do they need to wash their head? Of course. Do they need that product, at that price, with those promises? Absolutely not. The need is real, the answer is disproportionate.

It's the exact opposite of what I said about the newspaper ad: there, the medium wasn't useless, it was a question of timing. Here the product is perfectly real, it's simply being sold to someone with other priorities.

And let me be clear, because the nuance matters: graphic designers do a real job. The problem isn't their work, it's the order in which you call on it.

The attention goes to the wrong place

Here's the real cost, and it appears on no invoice.

A young business has a limited amount of energy, budget and available decisions. Every week spent on a logo is a week not spent on what produces results.

I see the same scene regularly: a logo worked on for weeks, variants, versions, meetings. And alongside it, not one decent photograph of the work, a site that doesn't exist or hasn't moved in four years, no reviews, no simple way to book.

You have a beautiful logo and an appalling website. Nobody will ever see the first because of the second.

You do it too early, so you do it blind

The logo nearly always comes first, when it's the last thing that should be fixed.

At the start you don't know much yet: what will actually work, who you'll sell to, which channels you'll use, what tone you'll find. You're fixing a mark for a business that doesn't exist yet.

The right moment is later. Once the business is running, once you know where your customers come from, and once you have real reasons to want a tighter image. At that point investing makes sense, like any redesign decided for the right reasons.

And it ends up unfit for everything

Direct consequence of doing it too early: the logo isn't designed for any real use.

The classic case, and I still see it every year: a wide, horizontal, detailed logo, made for a business card. When nobody hands out business cards any more, and everything happens on a screen.

The real questions are these:

• is it legible very small, inside a round profile picture?
• is there a square version, a single-colour version?
• does it hold on a dark background as well as a light one?
• does it read on a phone screen, at arm's length?
• and what does it look like to someone seeing it for the first time, in passing?

A logo that fails those tests isn't a bad logo. It's a logo drawn without knowing where it was going to be used.

The real cost of a logo isn't the invoice. It's everything you didn't do during that time.

What I'd suggest you do

Enough observation. Here's the method, and it fits in very few lines because it's meant to take you very little time.

One hour, timed

Block one hour in your diary. One, and don't run over.

• Look at your competitors, then look mostly at sectors other than your own.
• Note three or four things you like, without trying to justify them.
• Pick two colours and a typeface that match your state of mind.
• Write your name in it. That's your logo.
• Close the file and move on to something else.

One tip while we're here: avoid logo generators. They produce shapes already seen everywhere, often unsuited to real use, and you'll end up with the same symbol as three competitors. Start from something you like and adapt it.

Don't ask everyone

This is the trap nearly every business owner falls into, and it's fatal.

You show three options to your partner, two colleagues, your accountant, a friend. Each has an opinion, no two are the same, and you end up choosing the one that upset the fewest people.

The result: something smooth, without edges, that nobody hates and nobody notices. A logo that pleases everyone pleases nobody.

If you doubt your own taste, which is perfectly reasonable, pick one person whose taste you genuinely like, and follow their view. One. The rest is noise.

What I'm not going to give you

You may be expecting a checklist of what makes a good logo. You won't get one here.

First because it depends on so many things that the list would be wrong half the time. Second because it already exists everywhere, better written than anything I'd produce, and a search engine will hand it to you in ten seconds.

What interests me is elsewhere: anticipate how it will be used, make it legible, and stop there.

A logo that pleases everyone pleases nobody. Ask one person, or none at all.

So, do you need a logo?

This needs answering clearly, or I'll be made to say things I haven't said.

Yes, and it's finishing work

Of course you need one. To sign your documents, dress your site, hold your social profile together. A business with no mark at all looks careless, and that isn't what I'm arguing for.

But ask yourself the real question, honestly: is anyone going to choose you because of your logo?

No. Nobody has ever chosen a tradesperson, a restaurant or a firm for its logo. People choose because they saw the work, because others speak well of it, because getting in touch was easy.

A logo is decoration. Finishing. Good finishing counts, I'm not saying otherwise. But you don't lay the finishes before the walls are up.

The day it's worth it

That day may well come, and then it'll be a good decision.

When your business is running, acquisition is in place, the site produces enquiries and you need a coherent image across ten different touchpoints: yes, hire someone good and pay them properly. You'll know what you're asking for by then, and they'll be able to do their job.

Until then, an hour is enough.

Your logo will never bring you a customer. All it can do is confirm a good impression that something else created.

And if you disagree, tell me, I genuinely want to hear it. But show me your website first.