Take two coffee shops, Starbucks and Octane. Remove all the signage and logos. Would you be able to tell the difference?

Of course. Starbucks and Octane couldn't be more different. And these differences aren't given away just from the badge they wear on their doors.

Your logo is only a small part of what makes your brand great (and recognizable). When you walk into a Starbucks, the lighting, the music, the furniture, the type on the menu, the smells, the employees, the sounds, the aging baked goods – all of these things play a part. In another coffee shop, those details come together very differently.

We have a tendency to ask too much from a logo. We want it to tell the whole story. (A coffee shop logo should have a steamy cup! It should have beans.) But when you see the green mermaid – which has nothing to do with coffee – you think of coffee.

I love this quote by Peter Saville:

“They were trying to teach graphics as epitomised by the recognised practitioners of the time – a Milton Glaser or a Pentagram. But they’d lost grasp of the moment. The agenda was how to find witty visual puns to summarise a situation: a logo for a restaurant could be a bite out of a plate. Well, to a young person growing up on Roxy Music, that was utterly banal. I won’t spend five minutes thinking down that line. It’s stupid. It tells me nothing about the restaurant. What I learned from style culture was if you dress a particular way, you communicate with like-minded people. I just employed exactly the same technique with graphics. So forget the bite out of the plate. The choice of type alone will tell you what kind of restaurant this is. Get the typeface, size, position, spacing and mood right, and it will tell you. Is it Le Gavroche or is it McDonald’s? It’s the language of semiotics, not of puns.”

A logo is less important than the company it represents. It's simply tied to the quality of of that company as an identifier. What's important is the brand language as a whole. The sights and sounds and smells and people and products. If these things are consistent, you have a brand. If these things are considered, you're getting the attention of like-minded people.

Does that mean your logo doesn't matter? Not necessarily. For there is intrinsic value in beauty and in good design. What you wear sends a certain message about who you are. If you are selling to a customer who likes nice shoes, well, you should probably put on a pair of nice shoes. Just don't forget about the rest of the outfit.

“Good design adds value of some kind and, incidentally, could be sheer pleasure. A well-designed logo, in the end, is a reflection of the business it symbolizes. It connotes a thoughtful and purposeful enterprise, and mirrors the quality of its products and services. It is good public relations – a harbinger of good will.”
– Paul Rand

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