Christina Hall advises against literal, pictorial logos (e.g., showing pipes for a plumbing company), arguing such designs can feel tacky and subconsciously cheapen a brand. She emphasizes that branding operates largely on subconscious visual cues and that designers should craft visuals to influence audience perceptions beyond literal depictions.
Chapters
I don't know who needs to hear this, but your logo does not need to be a literal representation of your business's services. What I mean by that is, like, if you're a plumbing company, you do not need to have pipes in your logo or a pipe wrench in your logo. I think literal representations of things like this are actually really, really tacky, and I think it cheapens a brand's perception among their customers and audience. This isn't a conscious thought. Like, people do not go around looking at logos going, oh, that company's cheap. It's a subconscious thought. That's the whole entire point of branding, is to appeal to people's subconscious and the thoughts that aren't at the forefront of their mind on top of other things like values and et cetera, et cetera. But visually, we aren't consciously thinking about every visual thing we take in. I'm sure you've heard that, like, we're processing like, a million data points a second, especially in the digital days. That's true visually. And if your brand's visual designs are not getting across the right types of data points that you want people to be subconsciously absorbing, they're not going to think the right things about your business that they need to think in order to invest in you. This is why it's so important to have a.