Zen Saying About Symbols
Posted in: Uncategorized“To point at the moon a finger is needed, but woe to those who take the finger for the moon.”
Symbols can become powerful conveyors of emotion and meaning. However, you should never confuse the symbol with the meaning, like many marketers frequently do. They absolutely love to commiserate (and waste a lot of money and time) on logos, colors, fonts, sizes, placements, ad nauseum. They don’t just “take the finger for the moon,” they suck on it for comfort. In contrast, great marketers keep their sights (and investments and activities) firmly set on the moon; co-creating meaningful, valuable and ever evolving customer experiences.
Take Nike’s logo. As the story goes, Carolyn Davidson designed the swoosh in 1971 while a graphic design student at Portland State University. For her services, she billed the company a whopping $35 (around $180 in today’s dollars). Or look at Google’s logo. Yes, Google has had several logos since its renaming from “BackRub”. But none took years to conceive and six figures to create. In fact, the first one was created by founder Sergey Brin using a free graphics program after teaching himself how to use it.
The question is not whether the choice of a logo is important. The important question to ask about a logo – about any and all aspects of your brand – is: is it appropriate for the feelings that I want people to conjure up? If so, don’t get all hung up on it. It’s simply the visual representation of an invisible meaning; meaning that gets built into the symbol as distilled perceptions and feelings accumulate over time in people’s unconscious minds.
