Logo Design: What Makes a Good Logo

A good logo is not the one you like best. It is the one that works.

That sounds blunt. But it is the first step toward a logo that actually delivers. Your logo is not a piece of art hanging in a museum. It is a tool. It needs to communicate who you are in one second — on a screen, a business card, a vehicle, an Instagram profile picture at 32 pixels across.

Most logos do not fail because they are ugly. They fail because they convey nothing. Or everything at once. Or because nobody tested them at real-world sizes when they were designed.

If you are about to create your logo or are considering a redesign, this article gives you the foundation. Not a trend roundup, but the fundamentals that have not changed in 100 years of logo design — and will not change in the next 100 either.

The 4 Logo Types — and When Each One Fits

Not every logo works the same way. Before you think about colours, shapes, or fonts, you need to understand the basic types. Each has specific strengths and weaknesses.

1. Wordmark (Logotype)

The wordmark consists solely of your company name set in a specific typeface. Google, Coca-Cola, Samsung — all wordmarks.

Strengths: Your name is front and centre. No guessing who you are. Especially powerful when your name already tells a story or sounds distinctive.

Weaknesses: Works poorly at small sizes. Needs genuinely good typography to avoid looking generic. And if your name is long — “Schweizerische Bundesbahnen” — it gets tight on an app icon.

2. Pictorial Mark (Symbol)

A standalone symbol without text. The Apple apple, the Twitter bird, the Nike swoosh.

Strengths: Extremely scalable, works from a building facade to a favicon. Language-independent — a significant advantage in multilingual Switzerland.

Weaknesses: Requires that people already know who you are. Apple can get away with the apple alone because the brand is globally known. A startup in Zurich cannot. The pictorial mark alone does not build recognition.

3. Combination Mark

Name and symbol together — but designed so that both also work independently. Adidas, Lacoste, Mastercard. Most professional logos in Switzerland are combination marks.

Strengths: Flexible in use. Symbol for small applications, full wordmark for headers, both together for the official appearance. You get the best of both worlds.

Weaknesses: More demanding to design. The proportions between symbol and text must work at every size. Done poorly, it quickly looks cobbled together.

4. Emblem

Name and symbol are inseparably fused — like a seal or crest. Harley-Davidson, Starbucks, FC Bayern Munich.

Strengths: Feels established, traditional, trustworthy. Strong in the premium segment and for brands with a long history.

Weaknesses: The least flexibility of all types. On a favicon, an emblem often becomes illegible. Responsive design? Difficult. For digital applications, you almost always need a simplified variant.

Which type is right for you depends on where your logo will primarily be used, how well-known your brand already is, and what fits your positioning. A tech startup needs something different from a heritage business in the Engadin.

5 Criteria: How to Recognise a Good Logo

Whether wordmark or emblem — every good logo meets the same five fundamental criteria. These are not taste questions. They are functional requirements.

1. Recognisable

Your logo must be identifiable in a fraction of a second. Studies show that people need an average of 400 milliseconds to recognise a logo and associate it with a brand. That is less time than it takes you to read this sentence.

Recognisability comes from simplicity. The most iconic logos in the world — Nike, Apple, McDonald’s — are radically simple. Not because the designers could not handle complex shapes. Because they knew: complexity is the enemy of recognition.

2. Scalable

Your logo must work on a billboard just as well as on a 16x16-pixel favicon. Sounds obvious? Test it. Print your logo at 1 cm wide. Can you still recognise it? If details blur or text becomes illegible, you have a problem.

A good logo is typically created as a vector graphic, not a pixel image. It stays sharp at any size. And it works in black and white just as well as in colour.

3. Timeless

Trends come and go. Gradient logos, 3D effects, low-poly shapes — all fashions that make a logo look dated after five years. Shell has only minimally adjusted its logo since 1971. The basic principle has remained the same for over 50 years. When Pepsi spent around $1 million on a redesign in 2008, the result was barely distinguishable from the previous version — because the basic form already worked.

I always tell my clients: if your logo no longer works in ten years, it already does not work today. Timelessness is not an accident. It happens when you ignore trends and focus on substance.

4. Relevant

Your logo must fit the industry, the target audience, and the positioning. A law firm in Zurich needs something different from a vegan cafe in Bern. That does not mean every bakery needs bread in its logo — quite the opposite. But the formal language, the colour choices, and the overall feel must match the brand personality.

Relevance also means: your logo speaks to the right target audience. A logo for a luxury label that looks like a discount logo misses the mark — no matter how “beautiful” it is.

5. Unique

Confusion is the death of every brand. If your logo looks like three others in your industry, you are invisible. Uniqueness rarely happens by accident. It comes from research — who are your competitors, what do their logos look like, and how can you deliberately set yourself apart?

An example: roughly 72% of all financial service providers in Switzerland use shades of blue in their logos. If you work in finance and choose a blue logo, you swim with the crowd. Perhaps a warm brown or a restrained green would be the smarter choice.

Logo System Instead of a Single Logo: The Modern Approach

This is where it gets interesting — and where professional logo design separates itself from the amateur.

A single, static logo is no longer enough. Your logo appears on Instagram (square, tiny), on a website (horizontal, medium), on a poster (enormous), on a business card (small), as a favicon (microscopic), and perhaps on merchandise or packaging.

The solution: a logo system. Instead of one logo, you get a system of several variants that belong together. A primary version, a compact version, a standalone symbol, and a black-and-white version. Each variant is optimised for a specific use case.

Major brands have been doing this for years. Google has an extensive logo system — from the full wordmark to the four-colour “G” to the four dots that animate during voice searches. Responsive logos, they call it: logos that adapt to context.

A logo system is not a luxury — it is a necessity. If you only have one version, you will eventually squeeze it into formats it was never designed for. That looks exactly how it feels: forced.

For SMEs in Switzerland, this concretely means: at least three variants. Primary logo, compact version, icon. All defined in a unified system with clear rules for use.

Canva, Fiverr, AI: Why DIY Logos Cost You More in the Long Run

The temptation is strong. Canva offers logo templates for zero francs. On Fiverr, someone designs a logo for $50. And AI tools generate dozens of variants in seconds.

Why does it still not work?

The Canva problem: Templates are templates. If you use a Canva template, hundreds of others use the same one. Your logo is by definition not unique. Plus you get pixel graphics instead of vector files, no variants for different use cases, and zero strategic thinking behind the design.

The Fiverr problem: For $50, you get exactly that: work worth $50. No briefing, no research, no strategy. Most Fiverr designers work with stock elements that are not exclusive. In the worst case, you get a logo assembled from parts of other logos — with potential trademark issues.

The AI problem: AI-generated logos are based on training data from existing designs. They can look impressive, but they have three fundamental weaknesses: no strategic foundation, no legal clarity regarding copyright, and no technically clean vector data. Tools like Midjourney and DALL-E also regularly produce nonsensical letter sequences in wordmarks — an AI logo with correct typography is still the exception.

The supposed savings at the start quickly become an expensive problem. When you realise after a year that your Canva logo does not work on vehicle graphics, you pay twice: once for the new logo and once for replacing all existing materials.

For more on where DIY approaches hit their limits, see our article on DIY branding limits.

What a Professional Logo Costs in Switzerland

Straight talk: professional logo design in Switzerland costs between CHF 2,000 and CHF 8,000. Yes, that is a budget. No, it is not overpriced.

Here is what is included at each level:

CHF 2,000—3,500 (Basic): Logo design with briefing, concept phase, 2—3 drafts, one revision round, final artwork, basic file formats. For sole proprietors and small startups who need a solid logo.

CHF 3,500—5,500 (Standard): Everything from Basic, plus a logo system with multiple variants, a more comprehensive briefing with competitive analysis, expanded file formats for print and digital, and design guidelines. For SMEs that want to use their logo professionally and consistently.

CHF 5,500—8,000 (Comprehensive): Everything from Standard, plus strategic positioning work, extensive market research, multiple revision rounds, and a detailed brand manual. For businesses that understand their logo as part of a comprehensive brand strategy.

For comparison: the hourly rate of a specialised designer in Switzerland is CHF 150—250. A logo project with briefing, research, concepting, drafts, revisions, and final artwork easily covers 15—30 working hours. The maths adds up.

According to a survey by the Swiss Association of Graphic Designers (SGD), Swiss SMEs invest an average of approximately CHF 4,200 in their logo design — an investment that more than pays for itself over a 10—15 year lifespan.

A Logo Without Strategy Is Just a Drawing

And here is the most important point. You can do everything right — choose the perfect logo type, meet all five criteria, build a clean logo system — and still have a logo that does not work.

Why? Because a logo does not exist in a vacuum. It is the visual distillation of your brand. And if you do not have a brand — no clear positioning, no defined values, no target audience knowledge — then you are distilling nothing. You are just drawing.

The logo comes last. Not first. First you clarify what your brand actually is. Then you define the strategy. Then come colours, typography, and finally the logo.

The sequence is not a formality. It is the difference between a logo that grew from a strategy and one based on an assumption. The first one works. The second one gets replaced in two years.

We see this regularly: businesses come to us wanting a new logo. In conversation, it becomes clear that the real issue runs deeper. The logo is just the symptom. The cause is unclear positioning, a blurry target audience, or an appearance that no longer matches the business’s current reality.

Design With Purpose

If you have read this far, you understand: a good logo needs more than a good designer. It needs a foundation.

With Tanner Schadstoffsanierung, we followed through on exactly this from day one. A logo system for a newly founded company that works on vehicles, on workwear, on building site signs, and on the website. In every size, on every surface. Not a one-off drawing that gets squeezed in somewhere. Instead, three clearly defined variants with application rules. The result is a presence that has looked consistent everywhere since launch, without anyone having to wonder which version fits.

Our Minimum package is built exactly for this. You get brand positioning, a logo system with three variants, colour palette, typography, and design guidelines — all from one source. Not a logo in a vacuum. A logo that stands on a strategy.

Because a logo that works does not start with the shape. It starts with the question of what you stand for.