What makes a good logo for a small business

Most logos fail somewhere nobody looked when they were approved. They look fine on a laptop in a design review, and then they meet the real world: the corner of a browser tab, the side of a truck doing 45 down Camelback, an embroidered polo, a Google Maps listing the size of a fingernail.

I have been drawing logos and building websites around them in Phoenix since 2009. This post is the checklist I run on a mark before a client sees it, plus the mistakes I see most often when someone brings me a logo they already paid for. Use it on mine, on someone else's, or on the one you have now.

Here are a few I have drawn. Six businesses, six different problems, six different answers.

More on the logo design page.

What a logo is actually for

A logo does not need to explain your business. That is the job of the words under it, the website, and whoever answers the phone. A logo has two jobs: be recognized the second time someone sees it, and look like it belongs to a business that will still be around next year.

That is a lower bar than most people expect, and a harder one. A plumber's logo does not need a wrench. Nike's does not have a shoe in it. What it needs is to be simple enough that someone who saw it once on your truck knows it again on your yard sign three weeks later.

Five tests to run on any logo

None of these need design training. Together they take about ten minutes, and they catch nearly everything.

1. The tab test. Shrink it to the size of a browser tab icon, about 16 pixels square. Can you still tell what it is? Thin lines, small lettering and taglines disappear first. If the full logo cannot survive this, it needs a compact version that can, and that version should come from whoever drew it, not from you squinting in Canva.
2. The one color test. Look at it in solid black, no grays, no gradients. Then in solid white on black. Vinyl lettering, embroidery, screen printed shirts, rubber stamps and a lot of print ads are one color. A logo that only works in full color with a soft shadow is a logo you will be paying someone to redraw.
3. The truck test. Put it on a screen, walk to the far side of the room, and look at it for two seconds. That is roughly what a driver gets from your vehicle wrap. If you cannot read the name, neither can they.
4. The lineup test. Search your service and your city, open your top five competitors, and put their logos in a row next to yours. If yours could be swapped into that row without anyone noticing, it is not doing its job. In Phoenix this one is brutal. Count the suns, the saguaros and the mountain outlines.
5. The phone test. Describe it to someone over the phone in one sentence. "A navy circle with a white house in it" works. "A gradient swoosh turning into a sort of leaf, with the initials behind it" means it is doing too much.

The mistakes I see most

Everything in one mark. Every idea from the first meeting made it in: the initials, the tool, the outline of Arizona, the year founded, a tagline. Each one made sense on its own. Together they fail the tab test, the truck test and the phone test at once. A good logo is mostly the result of deciding what to leave out.

The obvious symbol. A roofline for a roofer, a tooth for a dentist, a paw print for a groomer. These are not automatically wrong, but they are the first thing every designer and every logo generator reaches for, which is exactly why they fail the lineup test. If you want a symbol, it should say something about how you do the work, not just what the work is.

The fashionable font. Every few years one style of lettering is suddenly everywhere. It looks current for about three years and dated for the next ten. Thin, delicate fonts have a second problem: they do not survive embroidery, where thread has a minimum width and fine strokes turn into a blur.

Initials, too early. Monograms work for businesses people already know. For a new business, two letters in a circle say nothing at all, because nobody has learned what they stand for yet. For the first few years, your name should be most of the logo.

A template with your name typed in. Template sites sell the same mark to many buyers, so the logo that is yours is also somebody else's, sometimes in your own city. Read the license before you buy one: plenty of them do not let you register the design as a trademark, which is the kind of thing you find out after it is already on the truck.

The files you should walk away with

Whoever draws your logo, this is the list to check off before you pay the final invoice:

• Vector source files, SVG plus EPS or AI. These scale to a billboard without going blurry. If all you have is a JPG, you do not really have a logo, you have a picture of one.
• Three color versions: full color, solid black, and solid white for dark backgrounds.
• The layouts you will actually use: a wide version, a stacked version, and the compact icon on its own.
• Transparent PNGs for your website, email signature and social profiles.
• The exact colors and fonts, written down: HEX codes for screens, CMYK for print, and the names of the fonts.
• Ownership in writing. You own it outright. The designer showing it in their portfolio is normal; the designer licensing it back to you is not.

I get a call more often than you would think from someone who needs a sign made and cannot find their logo file. The designer moved on, the email is gone, and the only copy left is a small image saved off an old Facebook page. Redrawing it costs money the original file would have saved. If you want to see what that difference looks like up close, there is a side by side on my logo design page.

How I do it, and what it costs

A logo with me is $500, flat. Here is what that buys:

1. A conversation first. Who your customers are, who you are up against, and where the logo will live most: a truck, a storefront, Instagram, a uniform. Where it lives decides more about the design than anyone's favorite color.
2. At least twenty concepts. Not one idea in three colors. Genuinely different directions, so you are choosing between ideas rather than shades.
3. Revisions until it is right. You pick a direction, and I refine it with you until you would put it on the truck tomorrow.
4. The five tests above, run before you see the final version, not after you have paid for it.
5. The full file list above, and it is yours outright.

Most logos are done in a week or less. A full identity, meaning a color system, a font pairing, stationery, signage and a brand book for teams, is quoted on top, and what it includes is on the logo design page.

The short version

A good logo survives a browser tab, a single color and two seconds on the side of a truck, and it does not disappear in a row of your competitors. Get vector files, and get ownership in writing.

If the logo you have already passes all five tests, keep it, whatever anyone tells you. A rebrand you do not need is the most expensive logo there is. If it does not pass, tell me about your business and I will tell you honestly whether it needs redrawing or just cleaning up.