Busy designs are said to be chaotic and distracting, which makes it hard to convey a specific message. When imagery has too much going on, every element fights for attention, and people are likely to be confused or ignore the visual. While this is all true in some situations, it doesn’t apply across the board. In many cases, visuals don’t need to convey a message, and they’re not always intended to be meaningful outside of being something aesthetically-pleasing to view.
If you’ve been avoiding busy designs in your branding because you’ve heard that all of your imagery should be simple and to the point, here are some reasons to reconsider this point of view.
1. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder
Whoever said that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” was right. Beauty is subjective, and not everyone will agree on what looks good. When you’re trying to come up with ideas for visuals as part of your brand, it’s important to distinguish between things like your logo, and general imagery that makes you unique.
Food service establishments are a prime example of this difference. For example, if you’ve ever traveled across the country, you’ve probably found at least one diner in the middle of nowhere, perhaps by a truck stop, that had some license plates on the wall for décor. This aesthetic is quite popular with restaurants that want to create a vintage, old-time feel. And nothing nails it better than old license plates.
Many businesses collect old plates and put them on the wall, serve meals on top of license plates, have chandeliers made of plates, and sometimes they even get custom license plates with their corporate identity to add to the décor. This aesthetic creates a feeling of nostalgia for many people, and although having a bunch of license plates on the wall can look like chaos, it feels cozy and familiar to patrons.
If you’re trying to brand your business with a specific aesthetic, you don’t have to stay away from busy designs. All that matters is that it creates a positive impression on people. Business by itself isn’t automatically bad. You just have to find the right aesthetic for your particular market.
2. Some simple designs aren’t brandable
There’s a trend going around where people are using online logo generators to brand their business, and it’s not good. These logos usually feature some type of shape – like a circle, octagon, triangle, or shield – and the business name is located above and/or below. Inside the shape is an icon of some kind that is supposed to represent the business. For example, a store that sells camping gear might feature a shield with a silhouette of a bear and some pine trees in the middle with the business name at the bottom in script.
Although these types of designs look clean, they also look cheap and can ruin your brand image. You can’t recognize these designs from a distance because they all look the same at a glance, and although they’re simple, they aren’t simple enough to be brandable. For example, if you look at all the big, successful tech companies, like Google, Facebook, and Twitter (now X), you’ll find logos that are so simple they look like it took five minutes to design. They’re basically just letters. That kind of simplicity is brandable.
If you’re going to use simplified imagery, it can’t look like cheap clip art or be computer-generated. It needs to be identifiable from a distance, memorable, easy to recognize at a small size, and printable.
3. Not all imagery needs to be part of your logo
There are many brands in the world that are associated with complex designs and intricate imagery, not because they’ve made it their logo, but because the designs are what they’re known for in their market. For example, there are companies that make blankets with intricate designs from various cultures, graphic artists who create busy images for band t-shirts, and visual artists who draw, paint, and sculpt chaotic and busy scenes. All of these people and companies probably have a simple logo, but they’re known for the business of their designs.
Simple is not always the answer
Although simple designs do have their place, they aren’t always what you need. If you’re looking for a unique way to brand your company visually, try experimenting with chaos and abstraction in your designs, and get creative. You can always test things out to see how your market reacts before you commit to using specific visuals.
