Your logo, as a part of your whole brand, is not a static thing. It’s meant to evolve along with your business as your products and services change, or even if your mission as a company evolves. Modifications made to your logo to support these changes are referred to as a logo evolution, and even the biggest brands in the world have gone through them. In fact, you can argue that a successful brand must evolve and make changes to compete, remain relevant, and continue to win over customers.
What makes for a successful logo evolution? While this process often involves changing a color, refreshing a typeface, or reimagining an icon or other design element (called a logo refresh), it goes beyond simply making changes and showing them to the world. Changes to your logo take thought, planning, and purpose. You’ll see here how eight of the world’s most famous brands have successfully — or unsuccessfully — navigated their logo evolutions.
Before considering changes to your logo, it’s important to understand what makes some efforts more successful than others. That’s due to these three major factors:
On the flipside, you want to make sure that you’re not falling short as you plan the next iteration of your logo. Some ways your logo evolution may be unsuccessful are:
You’ve likely noticed examples of logo evolution without even knowing it. That’s because many of the biggest brands out there — brands you interact with every day — regularly make noticeable and notable changes to their logos, whether that’s to better reflect a shifting brand mission, showcase their main services, or mark a new chapter. Here’s how eight famous brands evolved their logos, and why these examples are ones to note.
If reading about these logo evolution examples inspired you to think about your own “refresh,” that’s great! There’s no better time than now to be proactive about your business’s public perception.
If you’re still undecided about whether it’s time for a logo evolution, ask yourself these questions:
If the answer to any of these questions is “yes,” it may be time to think about the next stage in your own logo evolution. Whether a total brand redesign is in order or you simply want to play with some colors and logo shapes, tweaking your logo can help ensure that your company and your brand identity are still strongly tied.
Namecheap’s all-in-one logo generator is just the tool you need to create your next logo. Our free tool lets you make unlimited revisions to your newly refreshed logo, so you can give your business a “facelift” without worrying about revision rounds or other contract limitations that you may have with a designer. This tool helps you select icons, fonts, and color schemes that best represent your brand’s next chapter, and you export your creation in the file type you need for your website, logo printing needs, social media, or any other purpose.
And once it’s time to reveal your creation to the world, the other tools under the Namecheap Visual umbrella can help you share it. The Namecheap Card Maker lets you create business cards with your refreshed logo, while Site Maker offers the all-in-one tools needed to build, host, and manage your company’s website. Logo Maker allows you to port your new logo directly into both tools. Check out the entire suite of Visual tools from Namecheap to get started now
Google’s change in logos over time is a good example of a logo evolution. The original logo had multi-colored letters against a white background, which is not that different from what it is today. Over time, however, the design became cleaner with simpler colors and a switch from a serif font to a sans serif font. The core of the brand messaging remained the same, but the logo was updated to reflect the modernization of the company’s technology.
Apple’s logo is one of the most famous examples of a successful logo change. The brand’s first logo was highly detailed with a hand-drawn appearance. As the company shifted toward a minimalist aesthetic for its products, the change to a clean, simple logo showing an apple with a bite on the side became a recognizable symbol of the brand.
You can modernize an old logo by creating a simpler version of the design. Remove excess elements or switch from a serif font to a sans serif font. Most companies want to keep their color palette for brand recognition, but you can tweak the shades slightly to make it look more modern.
A logo gets a modern look from having a minimalist, clean design. Styles that are too ornate or overly detailed can look outdated. Typography choices can have an impact too as sans serif fonts generally appear to be more modern than serif ones.
It may be the right time for a logo redesign if one or more of these factors is affecting your business:
From voice to visuals, here’s how to create branding that everyone will recognize.
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