The design of a company logo has the potential to expedite or stifle growth. The subtleties of the logo’s shape, color, symbol, and other idiosyncrasies can make or break your brand. What matters most is that the logo you create is easily recognizable and memorable, especially in the context of your target customers.
If you aren’t sure how to start designing a logo that proves indelible, you aren’t alone. Most business owners excel at creating a value proposition yet find the challenge of designing an artful logo quite intimidating for good reason. Let’s delve into what to focus on when designing your company’s logo.
What to Look for in a Company Logo
The best company logos align with the business’s overarching identity, purpose, and value offering. There should be an overlap between the logo and the company’s product or service. The thought of your company’s a product/service should immediately bring the logo to mind and vice versa. Above all, the logo should have a distinct shape and color combination (or a single color) that makes it easy for customers to recognize it as the symbol of your brand. So don’t design a logo that looks similar to another company’s logo as doing so creates the potential for confusion and possibly even losing business to that company, especially if it operates in the same space as your business.
When in doubt, err on the side of simplicity. Design a logo that is comparably simple and it will provide the visual clarity customers crave. Simpler designs are also that much more easily recognizable and memorable. The shape and color of your logo should be simple enough to be featured on your storefront, flyers, signs, products, stickers, and other marketing materials.
We would be remiss not to mention that there is an inherent risk in creating an overly-simple logo. If the logo is too simple, it might look similar to another logo already in use by another company. You can avoid the trap of logo similarity by being more figurative and symbolic with your logo than literal. Opt for a logo that is somewhat abstract yet is still relevant to your company as well as its value offering and it will be distinct. Such a balance of slightly abstract design and distinctiveness makes it that much easier for customers to form an association between the image used in your logo and your business.
Look at Other Companies
There is no harm in analyzing the logos of other companies to understand their marketing strategy and also to draw inspiration. Take a look at the competition’s logos, get a sense of their strategic approach to visual marketing, and pluck lessons of value from those examples. It will also help to venture outside of your niche and overarching industry to study the logos used by other companies. Even if you don’t draw inspiration from other businesses’ logos, spending time reviewing art styles, choice of symbols, and choice of shapes will help get the creative juices flowing. Viewing one artfully designed logo has the potential to serve as the catalyst for the design of your own unique logo that ultimately propels your company to new heights.
Alternatively, if you are searching for inspiration, seize the opportunity to look at logo ideas from different niches that provide a similar value offering as yours. Conduct a Google Image search for relevant business logos in your sector and niche, take notes while reviewing those images and use those insights as motivation for the creation of your company’s unique logo. When in doubt, take some time to review your own favorite business logos, performing introspection to understand what, exactly, draws you to those specific logos.
Think About Your Audience
In the end, the success or failure of your logo ultimately hinges on the impact it makes with your target audience. Every subtlety of your logo should be carefully tailored to appeal to the customer personas your business is attempting to move through the sales funnel for conversion. If you are unsure as to which demographics are currently buying or likely to buy your products or services, perform some market research to get a sense of those most interested in your value offering. Once you are certain as to the specific individuals most likely to buy your product or service, design the logo with their sensibilities in mind.
Consider Your Industry
The details of the logo you develop for your business must be suited to the overarching industry. As an example, if your business sells tennis equipment, it makes sense to use green, white, and yellow as dominant hues in the logo. Alternatively, if your business sells baby products, creating a logo with white, baby blue, pink and violet are prudent. Take notes as to how oher players in your specific industry designed their logos in terms of shapes, colors, and themes, incorporate those design elements into your logo creation process and the resulting image will make sense in the context of your industry.
Understand Your Brand Personality
No two businesses have the exact same character, personality and identity. Even if there are several similar players in your space, their personalities are unique. If you have not yet taken the time to develop a comprehensive understanding of your company’s idiosyncratic personality, now is the time to do so. Take some time to write down what makes your company’s personality uniquely its own, then incorporate those themes into your company logo with a careful selection of fonts, colors, shapes and symbols.
Decide on a Logo Style
The style of your company’s logo is shaped by its elements. Stylistic elements range from shapes to colors, fonts, symbols, and other subtleties of design. Even something as subtle as the curvature of the brim of a hat worn by a character used in your company’s logo or the shade of a particular hue used to liven up your logo plays a part in the style. Do not settle for a logo until you are completely confident in each of its design elements that create a stylistic whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. The style you choose for your logo will ultimately shape customers’ perception of your brand and the overarching business so it is imperative that you get it just right before adding your logo to a wide array of marketing materials.
Take Your Time When Developing Your Company Logo
The logo design process might take longer than you initially anticipated. Be patient, gradually perfect your company’s logo throughout the design process, even if that process entails a series of weeks or months. Do not move forward with the end result until you are completely confident in its ability to convert prospects into paying customers. If you aren’t happy with the logo at the end of the design process, don’t hesitate to start with a clean slate in which you brainstorm a new logo and repeat the process as many times as necessary until you get your company’s logo just right.
Once you’ve designed a logo that you are happy with, show it to unbiased and completely objective people outside of your organization for analysis. If the feedback from outsiders reveals common themes, incorporate those suggestions when refining your logo’s aesthetic and you’ll be able to move forward in full confidence.
