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What’s Needed For Logo Design

Part of properly marketing your business is to choose the best logo design possible. After all, this is the first thing that a lot of your clients are going to think of whenever they hear your business’ name. For this reason, it’s important for your logo to be easily recognizable too. That’s logical advice just like seeking dating advice when you suck at dating, your logo design should be good at marketing your business.

Things to Consider When Designing a Logo

The first thing that you need to think about is your logo’s purpose. This is important because your logo is going to be different depending upon whether you’re going to use it on your website or on your company’s stationary. If you plan on using your logo for different things, then you’ll need for it to look good in both small and large print. At the same time, you must also take the colors into consideration and those colors will need to be easily reproduced.

Since your logo design represents your company it should put forth the image that you wish portray. For instance, if you’re a lawyer, you’ll want a professional, yet somewhat conservative design. On the other hand, if you’re a professional entertainer, you’ll want something that’s both fun and light-hearted.

It’s also important for your logo to be original. If it looks to similar to other businesses’ logos, then your customers will find it difficult to tell you apart from these other companies. This also means that your design needs to be unique as well so that your customers will know that you have something that’s both new and different to offer them.

Of course, with all of this in mind, it’s just as important for your logo to actually appeal to your target audience. Herein think about whether you want something that’s trendy or traditional. This will depend upon who your target audience actually is. Failure to take this into consideration may mean that your business gets passed over and the competition will get the sale instead. So, while a trendy logo may be eye-catching, it may not be memorable. Remember, trends come and go; you want to be here in the future.

Along with your basic logo design, you’ll also want to create a slogan. It should only contain a couple of words unless you have a really simple design. After all, you don’t want the slogan to overpower the design. Of course, you also don’t want the design to overpower the slogan.

Designing Your Logo

Whenever you choose to design your own logo (logo ontwerpen in Dutch), you’ll need to familiarize yourself with the basics of a computer design software program. There are lots of free programs online that you can use, along with tutorials to help you learn how to use them or you can also do some experimenting yourself.

Of course, experimenting is important whenever you’re designing a logo. You’ll want to see how various fonts, colors, symbols, background colors and layers look together. This is why it’s important to make sure that the program you use has various things like this for you to choose from. Sometimes they will even have pre-made designs for various industries (i.e. clothing, food, pets).

Another option is to actually invest in a good, graphic design software program to use in designing logos. This will make sure that you have everything that you need and that you’ll be able to add things on if you find that you need something that doesn’t already come with the software.

Sometimes you can download things to use for free but other times they will cost a nominal fee. Nevertheless, this is what most professional graphic designers use because they want to be able to have the best, sharpest designs possible. Of course, if you don’t want to pay for a program to only use once in a while, you could hire a designer who already owns such a logo design program to do the work for you.

A Final Word about Logo Design

Your logo design should be original and it should also stand out. Make sure that it reflects your company’s purpose and can be easily distinguishable from others. The colors that you use should go well with your design. In order to create the best logo possible, you may need to hire a professional to create it for you.

8 Best Practices For Designing A Business Logo

Logo design is an integral part of website design. This is because it represents a business’s image and brand.

A well-designed logo can make a good impression on customers while the opposite is true for a badly designed one. Here are eight best practices for designing a business logo:

Simplicity

A good logo should be simple and functional. For instance, the Apple logo is very simple, which makes it easy to remember even if a consumer sees it just once. Another good example is Nike’s logo, which resembles a tick. These simple logos are the hardest to create because it can take long to come up with a design and concept that suits your company’s brand.

Colors

When creating a site logo, do not use many colors. In fact, the rule of thumb is to use one or two colors. If your products/services are associated with a particular color, use it prominently in your logo. Using more than two colors will make it appear cluttered and less compelling. Multiple colors may also increase your business’s printing expenses.

Timeless look

Here, the most important thing is to avoid the temptation to base your log around a particular trend. Instead, go for a timeless design because trends tend to over time. In other words, a logo based on a trend would become irrelevant as soon as a new trend emerges and a business that owns such a logo would have to create a new logo just to remain relevant.

Of course, designing a new logo frequently can be expensive for a business and even worse, it may have a negative impact on consumers. For instance, when the American clothing company GAP changed its logo in 2010, consumers vented their anger and displeasure on social networking sites including Twitter and Facebook.

The ensuing backlash was so bad that GAP had to revert to its old logo after just a week. This is a clear example of why a majority of the most successful companies in the world have logos that have remained timeless over decades.

Create logos that represent your brand, not talk about it

There is a tendency among designers to create logos that talk about businesses. However, this is not a smart approach because the majority of consumers can make the connection between a business and its logo. If you look at the logos of large and successful companies, for example, Apple and Nike, you will notice that they do not necessarily represent the parent company’s business niche. Nevertheless, consumers generally associate these companies with quality products, smartphones and athletic apparel respectively, meaning these logos represent brands, not products.

Scalability

It is advisable to create a logo that can be resized and still be recognizable. This is necessary because many people today use mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets that have small screens. For this reason, your logo should be recognizable across all screen sizes.

Separate image from text

If you would like to have text as part of your logo, make sure you separate the two. In addition, avoid using too many fonts when creating text to use together with your logo. Instead, use common and widely used fonts to ensure the text or words are easily readable. In fact, professional designers frown upon the use of multiple fonts. However, you should come up with text that you can use separately from your logo and vice versa.

Unique logo

Before creating a logo, you should study the logos of your main business competitors. This will help you determine the most widely used colors and text fonts. Use this information to come up with a logo that stands out from your competitor’s logos.

Hire a professional

You should hire a professional to create a logo for your business. While it may be expensive to hire an expert designer, the designer is likely to offer you expert advice as well as creative ideas and solutions. It is worth noting that a logo that does not make a great first impression on consumers is likely to have a negative impact on your business’s bottom line.

In summary, a logo is a powerful business communication tool. With this in mind, you should create a logo that your target market can easily relate to your company’s products/services. Some of the important factors to consider when designing a business logo include uniqueness, scalability, timelessness, and simplicity. Unless you are a professional logo designer, hire one to help you come up with the right logo for your business.

Top Logo Design Tips

Choosing the right logo to represent your company can be difficult. I have seen many logos that were simply not memorable, and did not inspire any interest in the company behind it.

What many people do not understand is that the logo is more than just a little image used to represent the company. It is a representation of your technique and creativity, and embodies the face and drive of your business.

If you need to establish the right logo for your business, consider some of the following tips on attractive and memorable logo design.

Be Unique

While this is easier said than done, a unique logo is one that will help you distinguish your brand from your competitors. Think about what type of business your group does and how you can represent that business in an attractive and innovative way.

You can look at other logos as examples, but you should never utilize any of their elements in a way that will make people think of those other logos. Analyze the potential shapes and colors that you can use in your logo and think about how you can bring them all together in the final design in an attractive and innovative way.

Think about how those shapes can bring more than one message to mind. The use of double meanings in imagery has long been a tradition in attractive and innovative logo design, and establishing such cues with your work can be a good way to stand out.

Utilize Memorable Colors

There are few things that will capture the spirit of your logo quite as powerfully as color. When people think about the personality of your logo, almost immediately, the colors will pop into their minds first, with the shapes serving as representative mediums for those colors.

As such, finding the balance between the right colors and the right message can be difficult, especially in the early stages of developing your logo. Brighter, bolder colors may be attention grabbing, but they can appear as overwhelming if not done right.

Similarly, more muted tones may appear elegant, but if done poorly, they can be easy to miss. Different colors will represent different things as well. Passionate reds, creative oranges, optimistic yellows, organic greens, tranquil blues, evocative purples, understanding the themes behind these colors will allow you to utilize them better with your brand.

Stay Flexible

While a logo can possess almost infinite potential for double meaning and attractive details, it is crucial to remember that simplicity is best. You want to have an easy to view and remember logo, one that is both interesting and quirky without seeming to be too overbearing.

You will want the message to appear in a flash, and for the person to associate your products and services with your logo. As such, one of the most important things to do is to look into the potential of your logo and see what elements you can downplay in order to establish a more powerful design.

No matter what type of design you choose to represent your logo, it is crucial to remember that your logo must be flexible. With so many different mediums that it can appear on, it is important for the logo to be able to stand on its own in a wide variety of backdrops and spaces.

For this reason, it is important to consider how you plan on creating a versatile design, or if you will make minor changes to it in accordance with the featured background.

Be Patient

Both the design process and the introductory will take time and effort. It is extremely rare for any logos to become immediately iconic, even if they are incredibly well designed.

Fine tuning your logo is something that you should perform as carefully as you can, ensuring that you establish a successful and memorable logo by improving various drafts and details. Even if may take longer than you had originally planned, finalizing your logo to the best of your abilities is vital.

As such, it is important to temper your expectations during the design process as well, and to remember that the logo that you are designing is just one part of a larger, more complete package that your company can offer.