It’s almost a sure thing. You show a first draft of a website design to a client and the first thing they say is “Make the logo bigger.” I completely understand why a client would respond this way. After all, it’s their brand, their colors. They’re proud of it. They don’t want some silly designer minimizing how they visualize their brand.
But it’s important, as designers, that we communicate to the client a simple fact: Their logo is not their product; their website is their product.
Whatever your client’s product is, that is what should be front-and-center, receiving the most focus. If it’s a blog, then the content should be the point of focus, not the logo. That’s why good companies are willing to hide their logo for the sake of keeping the content first.
Take another example, the world-famous Polo shirts by Ralph Lauren. The classic polo shirts are the most well known and are what makes the product effective and memorable. The one with the big logo is just plain ugly and, in my opinion, devalues the product, changing the overall perception of it.
The website as a whole is the product. If the website is featuring something in particular (a service, an app, or a specific product), then that is what should be the point of focus that draws the user’s eye, not the logo. If the user wants to know whose website this is, or who made this product, they can glance at the top and see the logo. It doesn’t have to be huge, it just needs to be elegant and fit within the context of the website’s design and overall purpose.
