Should your logo stand out or be conventional

In the article "Eight Critical Elements of an Effective Logo Design" Jeff Kear writes that you should try to stay within industry standards when designing logos:

"For example, did you realize that the main color for the logos for Microsoft, IBM, Dell, Hewlett Packard and Intel is blue? The color blue is associated with stability and progress and has long been a standard color among high-tech companies. So if you were a technology company, you would probably want to incorporate blue into your logo design to take advantage of these positive built-in associations."

He's not saying that you should sacrifice the originality of your designs, only that people looking for a certain industry might be looking for a certain look, too.

I don't agree. The whole purpose of a logo is to define a company, product, or service. You want to stand out from the crowd, not blend in. Sure, just because you conform to an industry-wide color or typeface doesn't mean you can't design something that stands out; but it's less likely to be a memorable logo if shares characteristics of other industry logos.

It's always a good idea to browse the competition before designing a logo -- not because you want to conform to an industry standard, but to see how you can differentiate the company, product, or service you're designing for. After all, that's what you're trying to capture: what's unique about your company, product, service.

You have a very short amount of time to capture your audience's attention, and if your logo looks similar to other logos in that particular industry, how will it stand out? And that's one of the challenges of design: it's not easy to come up with new ways to depict companies. Think of lawn services, for instance. Green, green, green. Not only is green used in the logo, it's often used in the company name, too. How will you make sure that when people think of lawn services, your company is the first one you think of?