Branding your invention

Building a brand and marketing your invention is key for maximising the value of intellectual property.   A logo is important because it is a visual representation of everything your company stands for.   A good logo enhances the first impression of your business and your products, establishing a brand identity and providing a more professional look for your company.  Think of McDonald’s golden arches or the Nike swoosh

Basically there are 3 different types of logos.

1. Font-based logo- Sony, IBM
   
2. Illustrated logo- Logos that literally illustrate what a company does.
   For example, Lost Key uses an illustration of a key in its logo.  More examples of Illustrated Logos- TeaTool, Coolzee 4-in-1 , Lost Bag
   
   
3. Iconic symbols linking to a company’s brand- ODM’s Mascot

Before you begin sketching, first articulate the message you want your logo to convey. Try writing a one-sentence mission statement and sketch the product/function to help focus your efforts. Stay true to this statement while creating your logo. But that may not be enough to get you started.

Here are some additional tips that will help you create an appropriate company logo:

• Look at the logos of other businesses in your industry.
  Are your competitors using bold colours or flashy colours and type. Consider how you want the audience to perceive your product and try to differentiate your logo from fellow competitors

• Make it clean and functional.
  A good logo should be scalable, easy to reproduce, memorable and distinctive. Icons are better than photographs, which may be indecipherable if enlarged or reduced significantly. And be sure to create a logo that can be reproduced in black and white so that it can be faxed, photocopied or used in a black-and-white ad as effectively as in color.

• Use your logo to illustrate your business’s key benefit.
  The best logos make an immediate statement with a picture or illustration, not words. The “Lightning Bolt” logo, for example, may need to convey the benefit of “ultra-fast, guaranteed printing services.” The lightning bolt image could be manipulated to suggest speed and assurance.

• Don’t use clip art.
  It can be copied too easily. Not only will original art make a more impressive statement about your company, but it’ll set your product apart from others.

Once you’ve produced a logo that embodies your company’s mission at a glance, you may trademark it to protect it from use by other companies.  The cheapest way to secure a de facto trademark is to register the URL website domain.

Then, once it’s protected, use it everywhere you can – on business cards, stationery, letterhead, brochures, products, website, e-mail and any other place where you mention your company name. This will help build your image, raise your company’s visibility and, ideally, lead to more business.

Just remember to keep your customers and the nature of your business in mind when you put it all together. In time, you’ll have succeeded in building equity in your trademark, and it will become a positive and recognizable symbol of your product.    ODM provides all these services in-house.