The Importance of Logo Shape
Logo is the first thing perceived by people when they see the product or brand, typically it located on the top left on the web apps or shown under mobile landing page.
— Eventhough it just an icon, it might affect the emotion of potential customers to buy the product as the color on the logo affect the person psychology.
Apart from the color, the shape of the logo will also affect the potential customer psychology. For example, if the product is about insurance, but the logo is look funny (eg: a baloon or a clown), pretty much the potential customer wont even read the product catalog/pricing.
Below is the practical guideline to determine logo shape of a product with following study case:
kapanrilis.com a platform to give reminder/notification for people regarding upcoming hobby related content (eg: anime released date, movie release date, game release date, event start date etc).
Definining Logo Shape of a Product
There are five steps to be executed to shape a product logo. these are :
- Product/Brand personality
- Find out industry references
- Decide logo type
- Brainstorming on visual methaphors.
- Craft the Logo
Product Personality
Apart from color, a product should have personality that planned to be conveyed to the potential customer. It is a metaphor of Human personality.
There are some theories about personality. One of the most famous is MBTI personality, founded by Katherine Brigg and daughter Isabel Myer. The MBTI theory based on personality types from Carls jungs.
total of 16 personality type that can be embedded to the “logo personality”. Those personality will directly affect how customer perceieve the logo or brand. Choose carefully based on the target market and value offered.
| MBTI | Personality Type |
|---|---|
| ISTJ | enjoy creating an orderly life |
| ISFJ | Friendly, Concerned About others |
| INFJ | Insighful & Organized |
| INTJ | Independent thinkers |
| ISTP | Tolerant |
| ISFP | Quiet, Tends avoid Conflict |
| INFP | Idealistic |
| INTP | Theoritical |
| ESTP | Focus |
| ESFP | Outgoing |
| ENFP | Imaginative |
| ENTP | Sharp |
| ESTJ | Result Focused |
| ESFJ | Harmony/Warm Hearted |
| ENFJ | Emphateic |
| ENTJ | Confident |
choose one of the personality type for the product and stick to those personality when shaping the logo and choosing the color by hoping the brand value can be conveyed to the potential customer.
for kapanrilis.com cases : the core services of kapanrilis is ensure its user to never missed their hobby related content release date anymore by notifying them through messaging channel. Hence INFJ (Insighful adn Organized) would be the best fit.
Another line services of kapanrilis.com is to give planned activity suggestion based on the user hobby preferences. The schedule will be integrated to the user’s google calendara and will be came as freemium services. These value is aligned with Insightful personality trait of INFJ.
Industry References
get some references on the other player logo at same industries (focused region: Jakarta/Indonesia)
kapanrilis.com is a content aggregation platform which currate hobby related content release date. There are already some big player on this industry (hobby related) sector. Most of them area focused on one specific topic.
| Specific Hobbby | Platform | Link |
|---|---|---|
| Anime | myanimelist | myanimelist.net/anime/season |
| Lifestyle Event | jakarta-toursim | jakarta-tourism.go.id/event |
| Movie | 21cineplex | m.21cineplex.com/id/movies?tabs=upcoming |
| Mobile Games | taptap | taptap.io/upcoming |
| PC Stream | Steam | store.steampowered.com/explore/upcoming/ |
| Technology event | Event Brite | eventbrite.com/d/indonesia–jakarta-pusat/events/ |
| Discount | Gila Diskon | giladiskon.com/search?is_gdplus=0&recent=1&category_id=0&tag_id=0 |
Decide Logo Shape Type
There are four kind of logo shape type
- TextOnly - among these industry reference only CinemaXXI, giladiskon and myanimelist are using textOnly logo. Others industry references has their own logo shape which represent their platform/brand
- LetterMark - TextOnly but with abbreviations. CinemaXXI, Giladiskon and Myanimelist favicon are using this approach as favicon has limited spaces. however, the icon it self is full textOnly. Eventhough these platform only use text as their logo, it still has quite noticeable distinction as their logo font-family is unique.
- Symbol - MAL, Jakarta-Tourism, TaTap, Stream and Eventbrite are using symbol as their logo. One thing that noticeable is: their symbol is unqiue, the writer never find same (or even similar) logo with other platforms. First take a way: logo should be unique to the platform to ensure the customer remember it.
- Combination of Logo + Text - EventBrite is combining logo shape with the text.
— Conclusion: There is no definitive standard practice whether a logo should has symbol nor text. As long as the logo is unique, easy to remember by customer and can spark the platform personality it should be good enough.
for kapanrilis.com cases : an emerging platform (start-up) most likely has combination of symbol and text as the logo. Kapannrilis.com will will also follow same thought process as they should came up with such decision after long research and for sure backed up by science.
Combining text and logo will increase the likelyhood of customer remembering the platform as it has two unique element(logo and text) and generally image is easy to be remembered compared to text.
Brainstorming the Visual Methapor
below are visual references from these hobby related platform and our interpretation
- Stream - two dots that connected with lines. it tried to convey the connectedness between gamers (first dot) and publishers (second dot)
- Myanimelist - straight forward text, high confidence with their brand as MAL is the leading platform for anime and manga.
- 21cineplex - text with unique italic typography. Market leaders on indonesia for cinema.
- eventbrite - looks like a road on uphill mountain with orange color. It feel like any typical startup would combine unique logo, brand colour and text
- jakartatourism - the logo is designed with several jakarta’s perks. for example it logo is shaped after iconic monas (national monument) that located at the heart of jakarta. It tried to express the authenticity of the platform as it promotes local tourism.
- GilaDiskon - straight forward text. similar with MAL. Not sure if it is market leader, but these platform with textonly logo show their confidence
Key take away:
- market leader platform tend to only use textOnly as logo. while, emerging platform (startup) will combining both logo and text to add additional chance for the customer to remember them.
- startup company is heavy invested by customer. They have super agile and fast paced working environments. the logo creation / design must be created after long process of research and branchstorming. there must be a science reason that backed up on why start up platform tend to combine logo and text. As a emerging platform, this should be the standard.
below are some visual methaphor that looks like suitable for kapanrilis.com platform offering (reminder for hobby related content release and scheduling integration to the user calendar)
- Reminder/notifictions is identic with following shape silhoute : bell, calendar. megaphone, lighting bold(not directly identic, rare occassions), papper airplane.
- scheduling is identic with : calendar, clock, diary, checklist
- the content managed on kapanrilis is hobby. it is a personal, not formal and the vibe ideally should be fun it could be : cloud that represent calendar, and star which represent the bell/alarm.
