The Brand

I believe that the quality of the product and content, over time, equates to what people think of as a "Good logo" or a "Good name". I think too many people obsess on names and logos to the point that they never actually start. Logos, names and branding can be so nuanced that it's hard to talk about through text only, but I'll try. In this instance I think the best I can do is run through my personal experiences in this area and provide some hindsight opinions and made up examples.

Logos

When I started my first company, Lifeboat Scooters, I right-clicked and saved an image of a boat from Google Images, then added text under it in Microsoft Paint. My first product didn't even come with a logo anywhere on it. I sold over $5,000 worth.

As my second product came to fruition, I had learned the absolute basics of Adobe Illustrator and managed to create a simple rendition of a flamingo to adorn the product as a tribute to the rider the signature product was designed for. I sold over $20,000 worth.

By the time I started Syndicate Store, I had progressed ever so slightly in my Adobe Illustrator journey and managed to create a unique enough 'S' logo that my friends said was "sick". We did $750,000 within 1.5 years of opening and the logo remains the same seven years later.

When I relaunched Lifeboat as NATIVE, we decided to outsource the logo creation through an online logo competition website. You describe your brand and put up a budget, and 100 designers send in their best logo in hopes of taking home the budget. Hundreds entered, and all were really bad, unusable, except one. That same logo has received countless compliments over the years and been etched into hundreds of thousands of physical products sold in scooter shops all over the world. (Earnings undisclosed.)

It might seem like there's a correlation between getting better at design and the increasing amount of money I made, but that's definitely not the cause.

The point I'm actually trying to make is that each time I did the best I could and made the most of the resources I had available, and then focused on the product.

I genuinely believe my logos could have been twice as nice or half as good without making a difference to my revenue in those time periods.

Sure, you need a logo, and there are schools of thought that would say that the right logo and branding are everything, but that's not where we're at right now. You're at the stage of just starting something, offering a product or service, and hoping that someone is willing to pay you for it.

To at least give you something actionable to go off: If everything is ready but the logo, pick a font that looks nice to you and make your whole brand name your logo. In places where the whole word doesn't fit, just use the first letter.

A good enough product can go very far with an extremely basic logo.

You can always update it later. At which point you'll probably realise you don't need to.

In 1971, Phil Knight of NIKE contracted a graphic design student to design a logo for his company who came up with the famous swoosh tick. Knight's initial response was "I don't love it, but maybe it'll grow on me". The swoosh is today considered one of the most valuable logos in the world.

Names

When I named Lifeboat, I was working for another company while knowing I would soon be fired. I could feel all of my effort being wasted and knew I needed to finally start something of my own if I was ever going to escape the rat race, and I needed to do it fast. Lifeboat was my literal lifeboat. I never explained the reasoning for the name and I never really knew if people got it or not. But the brand was a success and garnered a lot of respect from my peers. Time was of the essence, and I just picked a name that felt right because I had to start.

When I named Syndicate, it represented a movement within the industry. Most of the larger successful companies making good money in the industry were not owned by scooter riders. At the time, I was becoming very vocal about how important it is that riders step up and take back control of our own industry. I had a bit more time when naming Syndicate and went through the usual spirals over weeks and months as one would expect. But eventually, somehow, the name came to me and I looked up the meaning just to double-check I had it right. "A group of individuals combined to promote a common interest". Yup, perfect!

The business partner I later brought into Lifeboat thought the name was lacking and wanted to brainstorm other options. Minimum, Lyfe, and Empire were some of the names on the list already when he blurted out "What about NATIVE". He didn't know that years earlier a friend of mine started a brand called NATIVE that he was no longer working on. I'd always loved the name and knew so many others did too. I called my friend and got his blessing to carry on the name and that was that.

Lifeboat and Syndicate were a mix of very literal names that also, kind of, sounded cool. At least to me and the friends I was asking at the time. While NATIVE had some equity in our community already and just worked.

When it comes to names, I think one should focus mostly on not picking a bad name, as annoyingly subjective as that may sound. I would avoid incorrect spelling too.

You should like it, and if it can make sense by association to the thing you specialise in then that's an obvious bonus.

But after that, it's something that you add value to over time with quality product, service, content, etc. You have to make it good.

Branding

Branding is the template that your name, logo, products and services are delivered in.

It's everything that tells the customer it's you without you having to say it's you.

In one of my imaginary case study businesses "The Yard Barber", the whole theme of the business is presented and structured similar to a barber. Instead of scissors and hair clippers, we find hedge shears and mowers. The service rates are displayed in the vintage style of a barbershop chalkboard. If it weren't for the word yard in the name and a logo featuring a beard fashioned from green grass, one might mistake it for an actual barber, and by the time you realise it's a yard maintenance company you're unlikely to forget it. When the team does your property they're dressed in aprons (like a barber). They give your yard the same level of detail a barber gives their customer's beard. At this point you could almost call it a gimmick, a schtick. But I think committing to the gimmick so well that people don't refer to it as a gimmick, is just plain old good branding.

To paraphrase Seth Godin, branding is the expectation or memories your customers have of your company.

Branding strongly plays into marketing however I would consider marketing the specific methods you use to reach customers whether that's through making YouTube videos, Google Ads or various other ways of getting your business in front of potential customers.

If a YouTube video is marketing, then branding is the colour of the thumbnail you use on your video.

When launching NATIVE, my business partner made an ad that had our product in the centre set against a gradient background transitioning from dark grey at the bottom to light grey at the top. Our logo was to the top left and the product details in small white text at the bottom left.

I said "looks good" and posted it on Instagram announcing the release of our first product.

I then mimicked this exact template myself with every single official product release for the next 5 years. I've received countless compliments on the clean and consistent style and sold a whole lot of product all over the world thanks to those images. Our packaging is just black with a thin white logo and the product's name on each box. Other than a few team riders' signature models, our product range has been predominantly black and silver.

It's definitely nothing special, but, done elegantly and consistently over a 5-year period, we've created one of the most recognisable, yet minimalist, brands in our industry.

You need to pick something that you can maintain for a long time. The longer you run with it, the stronger it gets.