Logos are an important part of any business. It is the way you capture the essence of your brand and showcase that through your logo. There are a lot of things to be considered when you are creating your own logo, including colors, fonts, layout, design, etc.
Designing a logo needs critical thinking, planning, and creativity; it should represent your brand identity. A business logo design should be timeless, grow with your brand, and give your audience a definite idea about what your business is into without written words. Through your logo, you can give a powerful impact on how people perceive your brand. It is crucial that you present a clear statement regarding your brand’s message through your logo.
A logo may seem quite easy to create, but in reality, designing a great logo is challenging. It involves market research, knowledge of your target audience, and thoughtful consideration of various principles of logo design. Sometimes iterations in a logo are required by designers before getting it right.
So what are the steps to building a successful logo? A logo that can reinforce your brand and convey the apt mood, feeling, and tone of your business. We have broken down the post into some key steps you will need to take to create a logo that your prospects love. Read on to learn how to design a logo.
Research
Before you start making a logo, you have to spend time researching the industry, the audience, and understanding the business. You have to figure out your target audience and ideal customers to develop a better understanding of your vision and what you want to communicate through your logo. Your logo has to be appropriate for the market and tailored to suit your target market, initiating an emotional response.
Your logo has to be consistent with your brand values and the way you want to be portrayed.
Another thing to research is about your competitors, wherein you can see their logos and divide them into two sections – the ones you like and the ones you don’t. This will give you the direction where you want to go and also help you to differentiate your logo from your competitors.
List down the attributes that you want to assign to your brand. Finalize the company name if you haven’t. Decide where you will use the logo the most. It is better to keep your logo minimalist with a clean layout to ensure that it looks great on all the mediums.
Understanding your brand and brainstorming
Sit down with your partners and start brainstorming. Include people from other departments or even friends to get more perspectives. Start writing your ideas down. Take inspiration from the famous logos. Go through inspiration galleries, logo roundups on blogs, and searching in Google Images for logos.
Look at the logo design trends. Take time to understand your brand identity and its visual language to create a distinctive logo.
Ask questions like:
- What is the purpose of starting your business?
- What are the beliefs and values of your business?
- What makes you better than competitors?
- What three words would describe your brand?
- What three words would you use to represent your brand in front of your customers?
Make a list of words that describe your brand and how you want your brand to be perceived. Consider what would be important for your audience. Think out-of-the-box and try being different.
Understanding logo design
Logos have to be simple, timeless, versatile, and unique, apt for your industry and target market. They have to be easily recognizable and represent your brand accurately.
Logos shouldn’t be only trend-focused and copy of famous logos, complex and confusing, leading to poor brand recognition. A well-designed logo should capture the attention of people and represent the core values of a brand. It should personify what a brand stands for and be its visual ambassador. It should be easily understandable, memorable, reliable, and thoughtful.
The less complicated your logo, the easier it is to memorize. It should be clutter-free without many images, multiple fonts, and a variety of colors. Your logo should be versatile and look good no matter where it is placed. It should be appealing to your target audience and should work well on dark as well as light backgrounds.
List down the components you think will be important for your logo including shape, color, fonts, etc. It is essential to understand the psychology behind colors and shapes and psychology of fonts to make a perfect logo.
The majority of brands use 2-3 colors in their logos. However, there are a few brands that have a variety of colors in their logos like Google and Slack. For fonts, you can choose among different styles of fonts that fit your brand attributes and identity. You can even create custom fonts for your business, which can make your logo look 100% unique.
Creating a mood board and sketching
Even if you aren’t good at drawing, sketching ideas can be of help to visualize different elements in your design, and you can come out with a basic design. This way, you can even organize your thoughts. Try making a few sketches and think about how these designs will relate to your brand. You can create some logos that are tied to the company name and take some ideas tied to the industry you operate in.
Don’t be afraid of experimenting in your sketches. During the process, you might even come across a great idea. A bad idea may even lead you to a good idea. So experiment in the initial sketching phase.
Don’t get frustrated if the first few sketches aren’t working right – keep improving and using previous sketches to influence the outcome of new sketches.
These sketches can be a reference layer when you create the final logo in the software.
You can even create a mood board before starting to sketch where you can collect the designs that inspired you. Through your mood board, you will be able to see what kind of designs you are attracted towards. Visualize your business in different logo designs.
Making a logo
Once you are done with the sketches, consider those designs on which your eye keep going back to. If you have design experience or have access to software like Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator, then you can easily design your logo. If you design your logo yourself, you will have complete freedom of keeping your design the way you want.
You can even opt for logo template options and make the necessary edits in it. However, these templates are not very customizable, and there might be so many other companies having an identical logo design as yours. It is better to have a uniquely designed logo to make your business recognizable and memorable.
You can even use an online logo maker in case you don’t have the design experience. It is a better option than templates, allowing you to create more intuitive designs. One of the important things to consider is the layout. Your typography and shapes should be perfectly spaced, and your logo aligned with the surroundings.
You can even hire a designer to create your logo. There are a number of great freelance websites where you will find skilled designers. You just need to find a designer whose work you like, provide them inputs about your logo, and make payment for the work done.
You can even approach a logo design company to get your logo done. To make this work, the first important consideration is to communicate your requirements clearly. Make the designers understand who you are and what you need. Give them all the information about your company to enable them to create something unique. Providing complete details and feedback can give designers an understanding of what you like.
Taking feedback and testing
Show your designs to others – to your family members, colleagues, and take their opinion. Test your logo design with your buyer personas to see how your brand is perceived.
- Ask people whether they can immediately tell what your business does?
- Is your logo memorable and easy to remember for them?
- Is it versatile and easily viewable on different mediums?
- Does the logo look unique?
- Is it appealing for people?
Let people analyze your logo design and look at them from different angles. Be prepared for any comments, whether positive or negative. Criticisms will help you to make your final logo better.
Refine your logo before settling on the final design and tweak to make it apt, appealing, and memorable. Don’t be afraid of making the changes until you are satisfied with the results.
Ensure that your logo is viewable in both small and large sizes, looking clean and crisp and easily readable and identifiable for your audience. It should translate well when changed to all-black or an all-white version with a transparent background to work well in various visual environments.
Also, check whether your logo looks good on all the platforms you’ll be using from social media profiles to banners to posts including prints. You can even have different logo variations for different mediums. For example, you can have a symbol-only or monogram-only version as your Facebook profile photo while you can get a full logo printed on your t-shirts.
Conclusion
Once you have your logo, you can use that as the basis for all the marketing collateral of your brand, including business cards, brochures, leaflets, stationery, banners, etc. Integrate your logo design into your brand, which will serve as a starting point for designing effective marketing collaterals.
The hardest part of logo designing is starting with it. Once you start sketching, the ideas will flow, and you will create a logo that works. Don’t worry about getting it perfect the first time, just start, create something manageable, and update it as good ideas come to you.
The steps listed above will certainly help you to reach smoothly to the end goal of creating a usable logo by adopting a creative thinking process, coming up with new ideas, and hence, designing a logo that speaks to your target audience. By following the above steps, you will be able to build a strong foundation to represent your brand that is memorable and versatile.
ProDesigns is a leading logo design company, delivering world-class professional logo designs to clients across the globe. Contact us through [email protected] to know more about our logo design services.
