Logos can be an effective way for companies to create positive emotions in consumers, convey meaning and enhance recognition. Managers want to design the most effective logos, but what guidelines should they start with? And in today's globalised world, will the impact carry into other countries?

Academics from several countries, including Ralf van der Lans of HKUST, combined their efforts to put logos to the test on five continents. They were guided by two goals: to see if certain design dimensions carried weight cross-nationally and to see if consumer responses to these dimensions were stable across countries.

"Design is a language that communicates to consumers and others independent of verbal information. Hence, it is critical that marketing managers and scholars understand design's impact on viewers," the authors said.

"Managers have expressed uncertainty about how to manage corporate visual identity systems globally. Previous research suggests logos are most often used in unaltered form when going abroad. Does this accomplish their communication goals, or would it be necessary to modify logos for individual countries?"

They collected data from 10 countries with a variety of cultural characteristics and writing systems: Argentina, Australia, China, Germany, Britain, India, The Netherlands, Russia, Singapore and the US. Some 195 unfamiliar logos were assessed in terms of design elements by raters in each country and these results were paired with underlying reactions to the logos.

Three key dimensions of design were found to be similar across all countries - elaborateness, naturalness and harmony - which echoed earlier findings related to different marketing formats. Elaborateness is the richness of the design and its ability to capture the essence of an object. Naturalness is the depiction of commonly experienced objects. And harmony is the congruency of the patterns and parts of the design.

"Our research suggests these dimensions may be universal, which has important implications for design research. Focusing on a reduced set of design dimensions should make design research more tractable," the authors said.

The reactions to the logos were also rather similar, although there was some clustering into three groups: the West (Australia, Germany, Britain, The Netherlands and the US); Asia (China, India and Singapore); and Russia. The responses from Argentina straddled Asia and the West.

Their differences were most marked when a logo was more elaborate. People in Asia had the most positive affect reaction to elaborateness, followed by the West and least of all Russia. The authors noted that other research had shown countries with low uncertainty avoidance scores - such as Asia and to some extent the West - have greater tolerance for uncertainty and complexity. "Consumers in these countries may like and feel more familiar with complex designs than their counterparts in Russia" where uncertainty avoidance is high.

The authors suggested managers approach logo design along basic but essential guidelines, a point that needs to be re-iterated given people continue to create poor logos, such as that for the 2012 London Olympics. Their recommended guidelines include: choosing a core image carefully and specifying clear objectives for different regions; communicating with designers using the three design dimensions described above; having an effective design before entering a new market; staying away from short-term fashions and artistic designs in favor of simple designs; being systematic and allowing designers to modify logos for individual markets; and testing new alternatives against existing logos.

"For a manager interested in maintaining a consistent brand image worldwide, our results suggest a standardized core logo can work globally. Logo perceptions and responses are similar enough across cultures that a given logo design will produce similar effects in many parts of the world. In addition, managers may want to focus on affective responses where design dimensions and elements appear to have a stronger influence than recognition and shared meaning," they said.