Branding Crime 6545: Logo Overkill

There are people who think it is a good idea to put their company logo on every single slide of their PowerPoint presentation. They think that’s branding, when in fact it is annoying, dull and childish. Or to put it in designer’s terms: you’re just creating unnecessary visual noise that draws the attention away from the actual content.

If I visit a presentation from you, or you come visiting me doing a presentation, chances are good I do know who you are. I don’t go to presentations without knowing who’s doing them. Thus, putting your company logo on the cover slide is far enough. No one puts their logo on every page of a book either. Well, some do. Unfortunately.

It is essential for a good presentation to get the message across clearly. Removing any non-essential information is key. Shouting “Mycompanyname Inc.” on every single slide probably won’t support your message much.

But the brand is the message…

True. Then I ask what is a brand? Your logo? Is that all? Does your logo convey the whole brand as a whole? Ideally it would, but realistically it only supports the brand image, and it conveys the brand itself only very little to people who don’t know you and your brand at all.

For people who know your brand already, the logo stands as a reminder or placeholder for everything they associate with that brand. However, without these associations or “knowledge” of the brand itself, the logo is worth little. If it’s very pictorial it might still get the message across, but then chances are the logo is hard to recognise due to its complexity.

So: you show the logo, then give the viewer lots of associations, brand values, emotional gobbledygook without any logo noise around, then you show the logo again. Prominently. Circle closed. They connect the logo with the brand message.

What about Websites?

Logo on the top left. Standard procedure. Why o why, you ask.

A Web site is not a linear presentation. There’s usually no first and last “slide”. On the Web there’s a good chance any page on your Web site could be the entry point for viewers. So we’re kind of forced to put the logo on every page to make sure it is displayed at least once.

So now one might wonder, why not do the same with presentations? If it works on the Web, why not on a PowerPoint presentation? Because you’re hurting the clarity and impact of your own message. What designers do on the Web is nothing but a compromise for an extremely non-linear medium. Of course having complete control of the presentation, just like a movie or TV commercial can create that much stronger messages and impact. But that’s not how the Web works.

Even nowadays nothing gets a message across as powerful emotionally and immediate as moving pictures with sound. The artist can completely control the experience, and there’s little distraction. So would you want your presentation to have an impact close to watching a film on the big screen, or rather something close to the impact of a neon-sign in Shinjuku at night?

It’s up to you.