Rather than look like a start-up, often small business owners want to make their brand look high end, to appeal to the trust factor with an established look. This is even more common now with the spread of e-commerce where there is no human interaction in the shop, and the entire feel of the company is based on the look of the logo design and website. Simplicity and using the color black, or black and gold or silver always gets across the feeling of high class and luxury, as well as precision in manufacturing. If colors are used they should be rich, say a mustard yellow as opposed to a bright one, or a blood red or burnt umber rather than a bright red. You can read a great article about the inspiration for many modern luxury brands here, as you see what they have in common and how they are different.
In the news, as we have reported earlier, the 2020 Tokyo Olympics logo design was thrown out due to suspicions of plagiarism. So sad, but the good news is that the committee has opened up the design competition for the new logo to the entire world, under #Tokyo2020Emblems. What a great opportunity to submit a fresh new logo design to this international contest; a plucky designer could get lucky! For the full story on all the hoopla surrounding the development of this logo, and a lot of other topical information on current logo design using real companies as examples, Wired has a great blog. To make sure your new logo design is all original, give BusinessLogos a holler so you never run into trademark or copyright issues down the road.