• An effective logo is easy to recognize, even at a glance or at a distance
• An effective logo is easy to remember
• An effective logo tells people who you are
• An effective logo tells people what you do
• An effective logo suggests your service style

An effective logo may also have one “bonus” attribute that can make it not only effective, but outstanding. Your logo may also convey your unique selling point.

Knowing what it is that an effective logo conveys, we can start to look at some design qualities an effective logo has and doesn’t have, and why they are important.

Color scheme

Hopefully, your restaurant has a color scheme. Your scheme helps identify you and should consist of two contrasting colors. From those two colors, you can also find complimentary colors to use in the interior and exterior decoration of your restaurant. Often, the color black or another third color can be used to make the primary colors “pop”. It’s also good to know that certain colors have distinct psychological effects on how people behave. You may have noticed that many large chain restaurants use the colors red and yellow in their restaurant designs. These two colors make people feel “excited”. Research has shown that this excitement leads customers to eat more inside the restaurants they are used in.

Gradients

A gradient is the resulting color pattern when one color fades into another color. This effect may look artistic and interesting, but it muddles your logo and makes it harder to recognize at a glance or distance. It also makes reproducing your logo more expensive or even impossible with some reproduction methods, like embroidery. Stay away from gradients if you want a logo that is easy to recognize and easy to remember.

Bevels and highlights

Effects such as beveling, which makes the center of an object look raised while the edge appears to “drop down”, and highlighting serve to muddle an images appearance just as gradients do. While the effects look artistic and make the logo more interesting, it also makes the logo more difficult to see at a glance or distance, and harder to commit to memory. In logo design, too much detail results in a bad logo.

Shadows

After the last two paragraphs, I hope you don’t need much detail on why shadows, especially drop shadows, are bad for a logo. They add artsy detail that only serves to confuse the image. It’s extra detail that is there more for the logo artists ego than to make the logo more effective. Remember, “attractive” doesn’t equal “effective”.

Fonts

One of the most common logo design mistakes is using a font that is too hard to read, or putting a font on a background whose color does not contrast enough with the color of the font, resulting in lettering that doesn’t stand out enough. If the words on your logo are lost because they are too hard to read, you don’t have an effective logo.

Wording

What words you use in your logo and how they are emphasized based on the font size and color will greatly affect your logo’s ability to be recognized and remembered easily. More importantly, a poorly worded logo will not communicate to your potential customers who you are and what you do. Without communicating your identity and your message, your logo might as well be a blue dot with no words. An example would be a restaurant that just calls itself “Ralph’s” and has a logo consisting of the name “Ralph’s” over a plain background, like a circle, with no other words. This logo could easily convey what the business does by adding the word “restaurant” to the logo. It could communicate even better by including words that says what Ralph’s Restaurant sells, like “Ralph’s Sub Sandwiches”. Another approach would be to not have the extra words, but to use an image or background that infers “restaurant” or “sub sandwiches”. For example, Ralph’s could be spelled out between two hoagie bun images with a lettuce leaf on top and a tomato on bottom. This would leave no doubt that Ralph’s is selling sub sandwiches.

Shape

An effective logo doesn’t just need an easy to recognize color scheme, and words that effectively convey what the business sells. An effective logo also needs to utilize a basic geometric shape that helps identify the logo when someone is too far away to read the words. Along with a basic two color scheme, a shape in a logo makes that logo very easy to recognize. Think of McDonalds big yellow “M” or Burger King’s split yellow sphere (probably a bun) with a blue swoosh around the name and sphere. They create basic shapes and color patterns that are easy to recognize as soon as the sign comes into view, long before you are close enough to read the words.

Overall, you can summarize these design points by just reminding yourself to “keep it simple”. Too much detail may win some “oohs” and “aahs” from your friends, or make you feel better about your design prowess, but it won’t result in a logo that accomplishes the most basic task a logo is intended for, making people remember you and what you do.

Who are we?
What do we want our restaurant to be known for?
What style of service do we offer?
What kind of food do we cook?
What can our customers get from us that they can’t get anywhere else?
How can we make our customers FEEL?
What is our color scheme?

These are all questions you should ask yourself about your restaurant long before you open your doors. The answers to these questions will determine whether potential customers will ever make their way through your doors. They need to know the answers before they will make their decision. Planning to answer them after they get to your restaurant is not good enough. Answering these questions for your customers is what marketing is all about, not promoting discounts, coupons and specials. Answering these questions, in addition to getting your customer’s feedback on your performance, IS communicating, and a lack of communicating with customers will close a restaurant faster than an “F” from the health department.

There are many ways to answer these questions. All of them are forms of marketing, and work together to make up your marketing plan.

Who are we?
What do we want our restaurant to be known for?
What style of service do we offer?
What kind of food do we cook?

These are all questions that can be answered without direct communication. You don’t have to send everyone in the town a personalized letter to tell them what you do (though that would be effective too) if you design your name, logo and decor correctly.

Your name itself, and the font you use should answer many questions for your customers. If your business is “Joe’s Crab Shack” and it’s written in a silly or fun font, your customers can deduce without asking that you are a casual seafood restaurant specializing in crab, that you are most likely “kid friendly”, and that you are probably a sit down restaurant, as “crab shacks” usually are. This is a name that communicates who you are and what you do very well. It answers questions, and people who are looking for that type of restaurant will feel very comfortable making the decision to eat there.

A logo can convey many of the same things a name does. The words and the font the name is printed in is a major part of the logo. In addition, a logo can reinforce your identity by using pictures or symbols that also say what you do or sell. Keeping these pictures or symbols simple and easily recognizable is key. A person should be able to recognize a logo at a glance. It should convey everything it needs to convey in less than half a second, as that is all the attention it will be given. If a logo is too busy, uses too many colors, too detailed of graphics, or has too many words, it’s not as likely that a person will get the message they are supposed to out of the logo. A busy logo is like a long winded storyteller. Though they think they are communicating more effectively because they are going into greater detail, the average person’s attention span isn’t near long enough to absorb all the information they offer, so much of the message is lost. Another key element in making a logo easy to remember is using a basic geometric shape in the design.

What can our customers get from us that they can’t get anywhere else?
How can we make our customers FEEL?

These are two often overlooked aspects of running a successful restaurant. Most new restaurateurs see how other restaurants run themselves, and they think it looks easy. They convince themselves that all they have to do is to do the same thing, only better, and that this will make them successful. The problem with this philosophy is that it doesn’t give your customers any reason to eat at your restaurant than they have to eat at the next one down the road. You’re the same. You think your food is better. All your competitors think their food is better. Both your messages tell your potential customers that YOU are the best at what you do, but by having the same message, you are essentially the same in the eyes of those customers. You need a different message, and the easiest way to have a different message is to offer something your competition doesn’t.

When we’re talking about differentiating you from your competition, we’re not talking about having a couple dishes different on your menu. That’s not enough. You need to have a conceptual difference between you and the restaurant down the street. You need to offer not just food, but an experience they can’t get there. Your concept has to be deeper than your food, because good food and service isn’t a special reason to dine with you, it’s the minimum expectation your customers have for the money they are spending. So your food is great. So what, it’s supposed to be!

What you have to do to differentiate yourself is to create an emotional connection between yourself and your customers. You need to make them FEEL something! Choose a particular emotion to build your concept around. Hardrock Cafe offers “nostalgia”. McDonalds was built on “convenience”. Applebees gives their customers a “neighborly” feeling. Hooters feels “sexy”.

Strong brands are built around strong emotional bonds with your customers. Long after people forget what they ate, and who served them at your restaurant, they will remember how eating at your restaurant made them feel. Then, when they get an urge to feel that way again, they will think of you.

What is our color scheme?

The easiest way to get people to identify you, your building, your menu and your marketing is by using a set color scheme. Choose two to three colors, and possibly a pattern, to use in the design of everything you do. Use it in your logo, your signage, your newsletter, your menu, your indoor and outdoor decor, and anywhere else you can. Having a color scheme makes you easy to identify and easy to find.

Whether you are just entertaining the thought of opening up a restaurant, or have been open for 30 years, ask yourself all these questions. Then ask some of your customers. If they can’t answer these questions, your concept isn’t communicating well with them. If they aren’t having the answers to all these questions effectively communicated to them, imagine how hard it is for them to communicate who you are and what you do to others. Remeber that “word of mouth” advertising you thought you were going to build your business with? There’s a reason why it’s not happening. There’s no reason why it shouldn’t though. Take these questions and build an identity for yourself! Let people know who you are! Communicate! Make your customers FEEL! You’ll soon have more business than you know what to do with.

Brandon O’Dell
O’Dell Restaurant Consulting
www.bodellconsulting.com
blog.bodellconsulting.com
brandon@bodellconsulting.com
Office: (888) 571-9068