A good logo rarely looks complicated. Its job is to make a company recognisable and memorable, and for that the mark has to work just as confidently on a business card a couple of centimetres wide as on the front of a building. When we take on logo design, we test the idea against a few criteria before we start polishing the details:
A word about trends. A fashionable technique makes a logo feel current for a year or two, then dates it just as quickly. A mark built on a simple form lasts longer and needs redesigning far less often.
A logo is just the company's signature. A brand identity is the set of rules that defines how the company looks everywhere: on the website, on social media, on packaging, in sales proposals. Even a basic identity includes, besides the mark itself, brand colours with codes for screen and print, a font pairing for headings and body text, and rules for placing the logo on different backgrounds.
For a small business at launch, a mark plus a mini brand book is usually enough to make the website, signage and business cards look like one whole. A full brand book with graphic elements, templates for different media and photo guidelines becomes necessary when materials are produced by different people and contractors, when branches open or a franchise launches. Without shared rules, the style drifts apart within months.
Almost any logo looks good on the white page of a presentation. The real test is actual use, so before you sign off, look at the mark in a few situations:
Check the file set too: you should have a vector file, versions for light and dark backgrounds, and horizontal and compact variants. If something is missing, ask for it right away rather than hunting for the source file a year later. One more common mistake is showing the options to all your friends and picking by vote: that usually crowns the most familiar and faceless mark.