Know-How Exchange : Branding

Your logo needs to be consistent throughout. If your logo is lower-case, then it needs to be lower-case whenever it is used, even in a sign or on letterhead.

A company name, however, is a name, not a logo, and I think it should be capitalized. I think it would look silly for the sign to say "kazu Corporation."

If you're going for an "e.e. cummings" look, then I guess you could use "kazu corporation," but I get the feeling that's not your image.

Of course, then you have companies like eBay that make all of this more difficult to figure out...

For me, though...logo: lower-case, name: mixed-case (capitalized).

My Two cEnts.

:)

See we're using our actual logo on the signage. The kazu product logo also contains a tagline beneath it. I had planned to replace the tagline to CORPORATION which would keep the brand consistent but they want to change the typeface of the logo to uppercase K.

This would be for a roadside street sign, granite monument. As for the signs inside the building they want to stick with kazu corporation but no capitalized K?

Brand identities are sacred things and how your company name and logo (type) appears in everything from signage to your business card should be consistently maintained and respected as identifying marques, wherever and whenever possible.

Obviously your two examples are reflective of Brands and their products that have had many hundreds of million of marketing dollars invested in them over their lifetime and, like Nike, either capitalized or in small font, are immediately recognizable as an International trademarks.

My suggestion is that you examine all the applications and uses of both the Company name and on the
product(s) as a Brand and determine where you will get the greatest marketing benefit, and you will probably find that maintaining their consistency is the best advantage.

However, if you do change the font case, be sure you maximise the opportunity to reintroduce both company and product(s) to your existing and future clients in a PR and Direct mail/email campaign. No point in missing an opportunity to draw attention to your name regardless of your final decision.

The basics are that punctuation rules get thrown out with names. Just look at eBay, which uses a very non-standard punctuation. Even MarketingProfs uses a somewhat non-standard punctuation.

So what is at issue is what is best for the company. And I agree with the others that keeping the same font, punctuation, etc. between company and product would be appropriate and it should be used this way where ever possible (assuming the reason you changed the company name to the product name are good reasons for this change).

On slogan, you could consider this separate from the logo (even though they are used together in places). This way you can take it away in places where the slogan would not be appropriate, and replace with the word "corporation" or similar where needed.