How Long Should a Logo Last?

I'd want a better reason to change your logo than its birthday. Ten years, 15 years, 30 years: none of those tells me whether it's working. What I want to know is whether it still fits the organization, whether people recognize it and whether it works where you need it. If it does, we should be careful about deciding it's a problem.

We looked at the logo histories of brands including Volkswagen, Shell, Mastercard, Starbucks, Pepsi, IBM, Nike, 3M and FedEx. Across the 21 completed lifespans of individual logo versions in our sample, the average was 11 years. So was the median. You could take that number and decide your company is due. I wouldn't. It tells us how often those particular versions changed, which is different from telling us when yours should.

Volkswagen is a useful example. Since 1948, its logo has changed roughly every nine years. The geometry changed, the color changed, and at one point it became three-dimensional before eventually flattening back out. But the basic V over the W has lasted nearly 90 years. Nike's Swoosh and IBM's stripes have been around for more than 50. The familiar 3M wordmark is approaching 50, and FedEx has passed 30. There's a lot of life left in an idea people recognize, even when the way you draw it needs some work.

The trouble usually starts with somebody saying, “It feels dated.” I want to know what they mean by that. Does it give customers the wrong impression? Does it look like a business we've outgrown? Or are the people inside the company just tired of it? When you've seen the same mark on every presentation, coffee mug and email signature for 14 years, I understand the fatigue. But your customers haven't been sitting through all those presentations. What feels overused to you may just be getting familiar to them.

At Daake, we say brand is what they remember. A recognizable logo is part of that memory, and building it takes time and money. Before we replace one, I want to understand what people associate with it and how much of that is worth keeping. Something can be awkward, unfashionable and valuable at the same time. That's occasionally inconvenient for a designer. A beautiful replacement can still be a bad decision.

The strongest reason to change an identity usually comes from something that happened in the business. Two organizations have merged. The company has entered a different market. The offer has changed. The business has grown well beyond what its name and identity suggest. Now there's a gap between what the organization has become and what people understand about it. That's a problem we can help solve.

Even then, we need to be specific about how much change is necessary. New photography, typography, color, layout and language can do a lot. Sometimes the mark needs a few adjustments so it reproduces better. Sometimes the whole identity needs to move forward while keeping the parts people know. And sometimes we really do need a new name and symbol. Those are different assignments with different costs. We should know which one we're taking on before anybody starts drawing.

There are practical reasons to make changes, too. A logo designed for a building sign and letterhead may struggle in an app icon. Fine lines disappear, small type becomes illegible and complicated details turn into a smudge. Volkswagen's 2019 simplification is one example of making a familiar identity easier to use digitally. A problem at a small size may call for a simpler version of the mark. It doesn't automatically mean the whole idea has failed.

How often any of this becomes necessary depends on the business. Consumer brands face a lot of pressure to stay current. They're on shelves, packaging and screens, competing for attention every day. But the better known they become, the more they have to protect. People recognize the color, the shape of the package, the symbol. You can change quite a bit around those things and still give people something familiar to find.

An industrial company has a different problem. Its logo may be on buildings, trucks, equipment, uniforms, dealer signs and products expected to last 30 years. Changing all of that can be a colossal pain in the ass. A digital business can update its identity overnight. An industrial company may still be finding the old logo on a forklift in Wichita in 2041. The cost of the design is only part of the decision.

Category matters as much as the distinction between B2B and B2C. Fashion and entertainment face different expectations from healthcare, finance and higher education. Automotive brands keep refining badges people have known for generations. In luxury, the age of an identity can be part of its appeal. I wouldn't give all of those organizations the same advice about when to change.

The size and reach of an organization matter, too. More countries, products, buildings and partners mean more places to make the change. Moving into a new market may reveal a problem with language or meaning that wasn't obvious at home. A well-known symbol can help. Starbucks eventually had enough recognition in its siren to remove the words from the logo. That took years to earn. Once you have that kind of familiarity, giving people something entirely new to learn needs a good reason.

Then there's the question of who has to agree. A privately held company can make a decision differently from a university system, healthcare organization or franchise network. More people have a legitimate stake in the identity, and some of them helped build what it represents. Their attachment deserves consideration. We also have to understand when protecting something familiar is getting in the way of a necessary change.

A young company has more room to experiment. It's still figuring out its product, audience and direction, and usually has less recognition to lose. An established organization needs a clearer understanding of what it's giving up. Sometimes our recommendation should be to leave the damn logo alone and improve how the company uses it. I'd rather make that recommendation than sell somebody a change they don't need.

I'd review an identity every three to five years. I'd want to know whether it still fits the business, stands apart from competitors, works in the places it's used and helps people remember the right things. That review might lead to a new logo. It might also reveal that the photography is weak, the language is vague or everybody is using a different version of the same materials. Those are worth fixing.

If you're planning ahead, you might allow for updates to the surrounding visual system every three to seven years, a logo refinement around eight to 12 and a more substantial redesign somewhere around 15 to 25. I'd treat those as rough planning assumptions, never a schedule. Our small sample doesn't establish an industry standard, and a distinctive symbol can keep working for 30, 40 or 50 years. I'd be happy to design one that outlived me.

A logo is the shortest poem an organization writes about itself. If it still says something true, works where you need it and helps people remember you, I'd keep it. We can find plenty of other things to fix.