How My Company’s Logo Design Contributes to Our Success.

We all know that a good logo design & branding can set you apart from the crowd, but what is the actual ROI of a good logo? Can it even be measured? Maybe by the end of this, we can answer that question.

People swoon over my business card every time I pitch it around and I am often asked how I came up with it or “What’s the story behind this?” I’ve explained it so many times I figured I would write it out, so here it is.

The beginning of Kodeak branding

It’s not my company’s first logo. Kodeak was created after a failed launch of a mobile application firm I started with two of my buddies here in Tucson, Arizona. That first company was called Up Top Apps and our mission was simple, create better mobile applications that would make people’s lives easier.

We spent almost two years getting Up Top Apps off the ground before we realized the brand was not going to work because it wasn’t inspiring or intriguing and that we either needed big money to focus solely on apps or we needed to pivot and open up our breadth of services to generate revenue.

A business without a path to profit isn’t a business, it’s a hobby.

– Jason Fried, Basecamp Founder

This is when the pressure as the company’s “creative director” or “designer” hit me for the first time. I had one shot to create something that would generate interest, be memorable, tell a story, and make people want to contact us for their online business needs or we would run out of money and ultimately wither and die.

The inspiration for the polygons

I wanted to create an image that was simple in form but visually complex. I aim for simplicity in most of my designs because most people are naturally drawn to them. Humans like things that are easy to comprehend. 

We’re naturally drawn to efficiency so my goal was to create something visually simple at first glance but as you continue to stare at it, realize that this seemingly simple design is actually quite complex.

It’s a metaphor for what we do here at Kodeak. Is our mission simple? Yes, absolutely. Our North Star here at Kodeak is to help small to medium-sized businesses do better and/or liberate those who are crushed by their 9 to 5 rat race job. It’s a simple notion, help people make their businesses or side hustles more successful online.

However, as you really start to parse out what that entails, that simple idea becomes complex. Not only do you need a new websiteyou need a website that will convert traffic into customers and revenue.

Now that the site is built, it needs to be marketed and there are many different avenues to investigate. “Do I focus on Social Media or do I pursue Google Ads PPC campaigns? Or am I in an industry where word of mouth is just as good? Do I need an email campaign?” Now that you’re marketing, are you ranking in the SERPS? No? “Do I need SEO services?” Do you know what users are doing on your website? Do you know how to read Google Analytics data? Do you even know how to set up Google Analytics on that brand-new site?

All of these things hit business owners like a ton of bricks. A ton of very complex bricks. Sorry for the rant there, but I have to make it clear that what we do is not easy even though our mission is as simple as it gets.

The logo construction

Anyway, back to the logo… The geometric shapes symbolize all the factors and variables that comprise what we do, our services if you will. I wanted to integrate color that made the design pop to catch people’s attention. The bright colors are psychological in nature. Orange, Yellow, Red, and Purple were the exact colors I wanted.

Orange: Cheerful and Confident

Yellow: Optimism, Clarity, Warmth

Red: Excitement! Bold!

Purple: Creative, Imaginative, Wise

Finally, the bear. Why a bear? Well to be honest it’s a slight play on words. What we do involves writing code and in code we trust, so we wanted to pay homage to the technical nature of application building and coding in general. Admittedly, I had a tough time coming up with something to symbolize or personify what we do. I remember thinking about Geico and their Gecko and “Verne from Voya” and thinking that I needed something to make the brand real and tangible but not lame, obviously.

A Kodiak bear is the largest of the Brown Bear family and second in size only to the Polar Bear. They’re huge! Getting up to 10 feet tall and weighing around 1500 pounds usually. We’re really, really, nice guys. Down to earth, approachable, we love choppin’ it up with anyone who wants to chat about being or becoming successful online, but we’re a force to be reckoned with.

We are competition to the biggest brands in our market whether they believe it or not, doesn’t matter, we do and the last thing you want to do is underestimate a 10ft bear. PERFECT! A bear it is! We’re code MANIACS… Wait, no we’re Kodeak!

Wrapping it all together

So there you have it. That is how and why I designed the Kodeak logo as a colorful, polygon-laden, bear. We have done very little marketing and have experienced impressive growth in the almost 16 months since rebranding. All on the back of a logo that makes people wonder “can they do something like this for me?”

We speak to people ALL THE TIME that mention our business card. We leave it literally everywhere, all over Tucson in fact. We’ve converted customers from business cards we left in Nico’s Taco Shop. No lie.

So what’s the ROI of a good logo? I guess it depends on how good it is. A memorable logo can reduce the number of times that someone would have to see your business’s name before remembering it by 25% or more.

Trust me when I say that the cost of lost sales due to a logo or brand that misses the mark is expensive. It was extremely difficult for us to even give a free consult with a client, much less close them, with our old brand.

Once we rebranded, the floodgates opened and we are closing 90% of our leads. There’s a trust now that we didn’t have before. We’re not working from 0 or even from behind anymore. Obviously, it’s not ALL because of our logo. We have a quality product and skill set we provide our clients, but those leads would not have been there if we were still trying to make our old brand work.

If you are curious about how Kodeak can help you and your small business, just call us or send us a message on any of our socials. Check out some of our work on the Kodeak portfolio, learn more about what we do, and hit the contact page and give us some insight into what you’re dealing with. We would love to sit down and talk about it. If you’re here in Tucson let’s get some coffee and chat!

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