We love our real estate development clients so much, mainly because you are so passionate about what you do, and are so excited to get your newest properties up and running. The eagerness is admirable, but can often lead to overlooking the most crucial first step in building a logo: the brand backing it.
It’s our job as your creative marketing partner to ask you to slow down, take a deep breath, and think critically about the purpose of your logo and the most effective ways of promoting your new property — to think about the brand.
A logo doesn’t sell, it identifies. A logo derives its meaning from the quality of the thing it symbolizes, not the other way around.
– Paul Rand
Today, creating a strong brand identity and brand messaging platform is more important than ever. A solid brand presence can give your property longevity and recognition, and most importantly for your logo, create a seamless connection between all aspects of your marketing materials.
It also forms the basis for your property to implement successful placemaking processes. If you aren’t familiar with placemaking, check out our report where we go very into detail about the wonderful outcomes you can expect when utilizing placemaking in your projects. Successful placemaking needs the backing of a meaningful brand beyond just a pretty logo.
Your logo needs to mean something, and it all starts with the brand identity. What are your mission, vision, imagery, and values? All these aspects of your brand play into your logo eventually and over time, your logo becomes synonymous with who you are and who your property is.
Your brand identity will become your unique stance — what differentiates you from others in the market. This differentiation is essential to the development of your position and the overall understanding of what your brand means to those who interact with it.
The logo comes second and will come much more naturally after the establishment of your brand and the positioning of your property.
We get it, this is the fun part, right? Seeing the visual culmination of who you are and what your property stands for in a little recognizable mark for all the world to see? It’s pretty amazing.
Logos grab attention, make a strong first impression, separate you from the competition, are memorable, foster brand loyalty, and most importantly, are the foundation of your brand identity.
At AOR, we strive to create logos that are memorable, ownable, and reducible. These logos can be anything from word marks to pictorial marks, combination marks to emblems. We make sure the logo fits you, whatever that may be.
We love our process. From start to finish we have fun, and the resulting product is one we are always so proud of. Our strategy stems from years of honing our skills, but at the end of the day, the most important thing is that you love your logo (you’re going to have to stare at it an awful lot, that’s for sure).
Brand first, then logo. We can’t stress this enough. Seeing your logo and putting it to use is so exciting, but even more exciting is when you see it connect back to the very core of who you are — your brand identity. We put a large emphasis on our initial ‘Discovery’ phase in order to completely understand who you are. What we learn in our Discovery sessions directly impacts how we build your brand messaging and identity, and it’s the brand identity that then informs the logo.
Don’t believe us? Take a look at some of our logo work to see how impactful they are when they have a strong brand backing them.