This is Part 3 of a 4 Part series that takes a deep dive into what makes a logo uncool, and how to make them cooler. Check out the previous article: Your Logo’s Doing Too Much. Or, start with the first article, Why Your Logo Isn’t Cool Like Apple’s.

This is a much better alternative to doing too much, and I would suggest going this route if you can’t afford a designer but you need a quick logo. For example, if you just write out your company name in a nice legible font and call it a day, no one can say your logo is ugly. Bu they might say it’s boring.

It’s just easy to forget overly simple logos. If the Apple logo was a phone icon — or a normal apple drawing: whole and red with a green leaf — it would be ok, it would make sense, but it wouldn’t be special. It wouldn’t be cool.

Exceptions to the Rule:

• When a company is very simple, and we can beautifully simplify its product into an icon, sometimes it works to just leave it there. An example would be the envelopes almost every email provider uses: it always works. And email apps aren’t trying to be cool anyway, which brings us to…
• Maybe you don’t need your logo to be so cool. You can use other design devices to show personality and leave the logo to be just text in the right font, like Vogue. Just make sure the font is RIGHT.

So what’s the best approach in logo making? Learn in the final part of this series: Tried and True Techniques for a Cool Logo.