Signs it’s time to update your logo (and signs it isn’t)

Most businesses that want a new logo have been looking at the current one every day for years. Of course they’re bored of it. Your buyers aren’t. They see it a few times a year, and if it’s doing its job, they recognise it.

So before you change it, be honest about what’s actually wrong.

Bored of it isn’t a reason

The people who see your logo most are the least able to judge it.

It’s a common pattern. A new leadership team, a new marketing lead or a milestone birthday, and someone suggests the logo is due an update. Sometimes they’re right. But “we’re tired of it” and “it’s stopped working” are different problems, and only one of them is costing you anything.

Signs your logo genuinely needs updating

These are about whether it works, not whether you like it.

• It falls apart at small sizes. It’s illegible as a browser icon, in an email signature or as a social profile picture.
• It only works in one setting. There’s no one-colour version, nothing that works reversed out, or it disappears on photography.
• It says something you no longer do. A symbol or word tied to a service, sector or place you’ve moved away from.
• It looks older than the business. Effects, gradients or type that date it to the year it was made, when the business has clearly moved on.
• It’s left over from a merger nobody finished. Two marks stuck together, or one business’s logo in the other’s colours.

Signs it’s the brand, not the logo

If these sound familiar, a new logo won’t fix it.

Your business has grown and the story hasn’t caught up. People don’t immediately understand what you do. Everything looks different depending on who made it.

Those are real problems, but they’re brand problems. Putting a new logo on top of them is like painting over a wall that needs repairing. If that’s where you are, start with rebrand or refresh instead.

Tidy up, reframe or start again

Not every logo update means starting from scratch.

Tidy it up. The logo is basically right. It needs refining: cleaner lines, better spacing, a refined colour palette and versions that work everywhere. People still recognise it.

Reframe it. The logo stays recognisable, but the look around it changes, with new fonts for the web and headlines, a refined palette, and a short playbook so it gets used properly.

Start again. A new logo from scratch, because the old one can’t do the job, or because the business has changed so much that keeping it would hold you back. This is usually part of a wider rebrand.

Most businesses that ask us for a new logo need the first or the second, not the third.

What each one involves and costs

Every option starts with the thinking, not the sketching.

All three of our logo packages start with a Look and Feel workshop built on your strategy, then narrative and strapline development, then a full concept shown with assets and a homepage snippet, so you see it in use.

• Refresh, from £2,755 + VAT. Logo and emblem tidied up, colours refined, two concepts and all the file formats.
• Reframe, from £3,230 + VAT. Three concepts, new fonts for web and headlines, a refined palette and a mini brand playbook.
• Reimagine, from £6,500 + VAT. Three hand-drawn concepts, a new logo and emblem from scratch, a full colour palette, new fonts and full brand guidelines.

If the strategy underneath hasn’t been done, we’ll say so and start with a strategy workshop. We don’t take on logo-only projects, because a logo with nothing behind it doesn’t last.

Where it goes wrong

Most logo updates fail at the rollout, not the design.

• Changing it without a reason. If you can’t say what the new logo fixes, buyers won’t see the point either.
• Rolling it out halfway. New logo on the website, old one on the van, the proposals and the email signatures, for months.
• No rules for using it. Without simple guidelines and templates, people stretch it, recolour it and drop it on busy photos within weeks.