Businesses use logos in order to solidify their brand image in customers’ mind and to increase brand recognition. A logo can be a pointer of quality and merchandise of the company or brand it represents.
Many studies have been done over the last few years in order to explore into the costumer perception of logos to find out which qualities make a logo more attractive and memorable in a costumer’s mind.
It is worth mentioning here that it is significantly hard to single out the qualities of logos and see which of them are successful because the brand’s general image, and other attributes (positive or negative) tied to the logo’s image in the costumers’ mind, are hard to separate from the logo’s quality.
In other words, a customer might think he has a positive image of a brand’s logo but it might not be the logo’s great design but the result of brand’s effective marketing campaign that makes the logo memorable and seemingly attractive. However, recent studies have tried to overcome this factor as best as they can.
Effect of Logo on Customers’ Perception?
A question does arise here that that how effective logos are in building a customer’s perception about a brand. In addition to increasing the brand recognition, studies show that a good logo can catch the attention of customer’s by 13 percent.
Studies show that a good logo can potentially increase the brand recognition of a company by up to 80 percent or more. Furthermore, it increases the chances of customer wanting to learn about the brand by around 7 percent. This is the reason that companies invest so heavily in finding the right logo for their brand that compliments their brand image and portrays their company’s values.
Logo Design Traits and Customer Perception
In a study done by Siegel and Gale, some specific traits in logo designs were associated with certain perceptions in the customers’ mind. For example, the survey respondents associated the logos with wordmarks and serifs with uniqueness and sophistication, significantly more than logos without these qualities.
Furthermore, a bias was visible in the study from the respondents about the logos they were familiar with (e.g. Coca Cola). They had a positive image of a logo they were familiar with, even though they rated similar designs in other logos as negative.
Other findings of the study attribute geometric logos with being powerful, serif wordmark logos with being respected, illustrative wordmark logos as fun and cool, and holding shape logos as original. When asked that which attribute of a logo makes it memorable, respondents mostly said that simplicity makes it so.