Logos Don’t Matter (As Much As You Think)

Let’s get this out of the way from the start, I like logos. I’ve spent an absurd number of hours refining bézier curves, pushing pixels, and arguing about whether the leg of the "R" should have more pizzaz. Logos are beautiful. Logos are important. Logos can be powerful symbols and connect us to ourselves and others. But logos don’t matter as much as most designers think. ducks for tomatoes thrown at my head

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By Alex Center, Founder of the award-winning branding studio CENTER

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Wait, let me rephrase that, logos only matter in the context of everything else that surrounds it. A brand is not a logo. A brand is not a color palette. A brand is not a perfectly kerned wordmark or a perfect piece of package design. A brand is what someone feels when they encounter a product, a space, a person, a scent, a TikTok, a tone of voice, or a typeface. A brand is how someone describes it to a friend. It’s a feeling. A logo can influence that feeling, but it is not a brand. 

Logos are shorthand. Logos are symbols. They can trigger a feeling, but they don’t create it alone. That feeling gets built through repetition, through storytelling, through consistency and behavior and tone. You don’t fall in love with a logo alone. You fall in love with what it represents. Think of the brands you admire or feel loyal to. Chances are, it’s not because of a clever mark, it’s because of how that brand makes you feel.

You love Patagonia not because of the mountain logo, but because of what they stand for: responsibility, activism, quality. You admire Nike not because of the swoosh but because of the feeling of possibility, of athletic inspiration, of "just doing it."

A beautiful logo without a story is just decoration. A basic logo with a story? That’s where the magic lives. Designers love to obsess over the mark and I get that. It’s often the crown jewel of the brand system, the centerpiece. But the truth is, the brand lives in the entirety of the system. It lives in the typography, the color palette, the photography style, the tone of voice, the motion language, the way the website scrolls, the way the product feels in your hand. It lives in the Instagram caption that made you smile. In the OOH campaign that made you look twice. In the packaging that felt like it was made for you. All of those little signals add up to a feeling, a brand feeling. A great logo symbolizes all of that. But it can’t carry that weight alone.

Every once in a while, a founder or a client will say, “We just need a really good logo.” And I get it. It feels like the ultimate unlock for greatness. The mark that will make everything click. But here’s the truth: a great logo on a bad product is just lipstick on a pig. And a weak logo on a beloved product? Still a beloved product. Of course, ideally you have both. But if you have to choose where to invest,  build the world first. Find the story. Develop the tone. Set the mood. Make sure the brand communicates and elicits a feeling. Then, give that world a flag to fly.

Here’s a crazy thought, maybe logos should come at the end of the brand process, not the beginning. Why not? Because a logo should distill the brand’s essence. It should mean something. It should symbolize the voice, the values, the visuals, the emotion. It should feel like the punctuation at the end of a sentence. When we design logos first, we’re designing in a vacuum. When we design them last, we’re designing with context. That’s when logos have real power, not because they’re trendy or clever, but because they represent something with a greater meaning. 

Look at some of my favorite brands like Glossier, Oatly, or Sweetgreen. Their logos? Pretty simple. Nothing revolutionary. But their brands? Instantly recognizable. That’s because they invested in a total experience: photography, copywriting, tone of voice, UX, packaging, product design, retail store experience, merch. The logos are just the cherry on top.

Even a brand like Apple, famous for its logo, didn’t become what it is because of the apple alone. It became iconic because of what it stood for, creative empowerment, simplicity, innovation, human-first design. The logo became meaningful because the brand earned that meaning in everything that it puts into the world.

So yes, let’s keep designing beautiful logos. Let’s keep finessing the curves and sweating the details. But let’s also remember that logos are just one piece of the bigger brand ecosystem.  

And in the end, great brands aren’t built from logos. They’re built from feelings. And those feelings live inside people.