Your business needs a face. Something that will make it recognisable from other business and will tell your audience what kind of company are you. This week we’ll create your business’s logo.
A logo is one of the representations of your company; however, it’s not your brand. When you are designing your logo, have in mind how it will play with the whole brand, e.g. your tone of voice, your graphic elements or your typography.
Before we start: what’s your type?
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Typographic
One of the most common type. As its name indicates is a logo made with a font. You can make some changes to that font to give personality.
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Symbol
It’s an image that portraits your company. Works well on logos like Apple or Shell, because they are easy to spell, but if you think of cars unless you know them, it’s difficult to memorise.
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Combination
It’s a nice way to overcome the memory problem we just mentioned. You then have your logo next to a symbol that represents your brand. For places where your logo as a whole doesn’t fit, you can put just your symbol.
Pencil and paper: Start drawing your logo
Our recommendation is that you draw things with the old pen and paper because you don’t get conditioned by technology.
1. Start in black and white
Don’t play with colours at this stage. Colours will distract you from your primary focus, represent your company. We’ll talk about colours in the next chapter.
2. Recap on your audience
Have your customer personas to hand. Remember that you are not designing a logo for yourself but for the people that you are to be selling your services.
3. Check what others do
By checking what the industry looks like isn’t to copy, it’s to ensure you are different and don’t look the same.
4. Find your personality
You have to make sure your logo shows who you are and how you are like. And remember what kind of personality will attract your audience.
5. Be memorable
A logo needs to stick in people’s mind. If your logo isn’t straightforward and unique, it will be forgotten as soon as people stop looking at it.
6. What is going to be the principal use of your logo
I have to bare in mind that if your logo is for e-commerce, and therefore the primary use is going to be on a website you should design your logo to be working horizontally, so you save vertical space on the site.
7. Illustrate your business value
Make sure you illustrate what your company does. For example, if you are the fastest delivery man maybe italics would help representative that. If your business is in the luxury sector, think beautiful calligraphy types in gold (I know I said don’t think colour just yet).
8. Don’t use ready made logos or clipart
There are a lot of companies out there that they offer cheap logo making apps. This solution will dilute your uniqueness. Also be careful using clip art from Word, for example, as you will compromise your personality.
9. Be scalable
If you have a logo with a lot of details when you have to use it in a small application, you will end up with a smudge. Make sure to play with the sizes.
10. Avoid trends
If you jump on the train of trends, you’ll risk getting outdated before you know it. As good as it may seem to be part of what’s trending, you have to remember that trends change yearly, so unless you have a good reason for being on trend, e.g. ‘I’m an app designer’, stay away from them.
Next week we’ll be talking colours. Don’t miss the update and sign up to our newsletter.
If you missed out in our first two weeks check out the posts:
Week 1: Let’s brand your business
Week 2: Naming your business