Most small businesses do not lose customers because of a dated logo. They lose them because the business looks assembled from parts: a logo from one designer, a website from another, an invoice from a template and a sign from whoever was cheapest. Here are six signs your brand is working against you, and how to tell a refresh from a full rebrand.
1. Your logo does not work small
Look at your logo as a browser tab icon, a social profile picture, or embroidered on a shirt. If it turns into a blur, the detail that looked good on the original file is now working against you, because small is where most people see it.
2. Nothing matches
Put your business card, your invoice, your website and your social profile side by side. Different colours, different fonts, slightly different versions of the logo? Customers notice that as a vague sense that the business is less established than it is.
3. You do not have the files
If a print shop or a sign maker asks for a vector file and you have to email a former designer, or the only copy of your logo is a low resolution image, every new thing you print is a small crisis. A brand should come with every format you will ever need.
4. It describes the business you were
A name, logo or tagline that made sense for the first service you offered can box you in once the business grows. If you keep explaining what you also do, the brand is describing a smaller company than yours.
5. You look like your competitors
Search your trade and your town and look at the results as a customer would. If your logo, colours and style blend into the next three businesses, a customer remembers the work but not your name, and the next search sends them to someone else.
6. You avoid handing out your card
This one is honest and common. If you apologise for your card, your website or your van before anyone has said a word, you already know.
Refresh or rebrand?
If customers already know you, start with a refresh. Keep the name and what people recognise, usually the core shape and colour, and fix what has dated: clean up the logo, choose proper typefaces, and make every piece match. A full rebrand is for when the name or the identity itself no longer fits the business.
Do the brand and the website together
The website is where most customers meet your brand first, so designing them apart almost guarantees they will not match. Our branding package is the Full Brand Kit at $1299 CAD: a custom logo in every format, print-ready business card design, a branded invoice template, brand typefaces, and the website itself, designed together. If it is mainly the logo you are after, our logo design page covers how we approach it.