A professional and creative logo design conveys a company’s primary and vital message, including its mission, purpose, values, promises, and offerings. Thus, creating a visual representation of these messages is extremely significant and requires careful planning, especially when it comes to promotional materials.
If you’re looking for a guide to help you design your business logo, you’ve come to the right place. Read more below to learn about the importance of a business logo and what makes a logo stand out above the competition. This article will also guide you in creating your business logo from scratch.
Why Is a Business Logo Important?
A company logo has the potential of shaping the identity of your business, as well as projecting your corporate image and values. For instance, a creative and professional logo design for a financial services firm reflects the company’s values and promises to the customers. Similarly, an innovative logo design for a medical equipment manufacturing firm will emphasize maintaining the highest quality standards. Therefore, make sure to use appropriate symbols and fonts that are relevant to your business.
That’s why many businesses take logo designing seriously. Businesses either hire a graphics company or create the logo themselves using tools like printful.com. Without a logo, businesses won’t appear credible nor professional to their prospective buyers.
How Do You Design a Business Logo?
Since the logo is an integral part of your business, it’s critical to follow specific steps when you’re designing it. If you’re creating your logo from scratch, here are some of the steps to guide you in the process:
1- Establish Your Brand Identity
You want your customers to be able to identify your business logo or re-branding logo easily whenever they see it on a variety of business materials, including printed media, promotional materials like marketing infographics, videos, promotional pens and keyrings, business cards, letterheads, and envelopes, your company stationery, and more. That’s why before you decide on your design, you should first establish your brand identity.
Brand identity is the critical backbone of any business. Companies use it to promote and distinguish themselves from their competitors. Brand identity is used to express a basic idea, a feeling, a philosophy, or a purpose. You must create your logo based on your brand identity so people will be more aware of who you are as a business or organization.
How do you establish your brand identity? You can start by answering these questions:
- Why did you start the business?
- What is considered important values for the company?
- How are you different from your competition?
- What makes your business stand out?
- How would you describe your business?
- What do you want your customers to feel when they transact with your business?
Your logo should display your brand identity. Logo designs create a visual bridge to eliminate the gap between the company and the customer, establishing a visual relationship that will be remembered for years to come.
2- Choose The Right Color Scheme
Your color palette plays a critical role in the effectiveness of your logo design. Color psychology is the study of how different colors influence human behavior and emotions. Color psychology has helped companies build cohesive logos, create successful advertising campaigns, and create brand personality in business.
Here are some of the meanings behind the colors according to color theory:
- Red – gives a feeling of excitement, passion, and anger. It’s a great choice if your brand identity is loud and youthful and you want to stand out.
- Yellow – it’s the color used by brands that want to appear accessible and friendly. It gives a cheerful and youthful vibe.
- Orange – the vibrant color gives a sense of playfulness and high energy.
- Green – it’s a versatile color, and it works for any brand. It’s mainly used by brands that want to connect nature or be perceived as environment-friendly.
- Blue – symbolizes trustworthiness and maturity and gives off a calm and cool vibe.
- White – it’s widely used for brands that aim to be minimalist and simple.
- Black – it’s used by brands to give off elegance and a modern feel.
- Purple or Pink – these colors are used to show off femininity. Purple is mainly also used by luxurious brands.
- Brown – shades of brown are used for brands who want to give off a masculine or rugged look.
In summary, bright colors and bold colors motivate people, appealing to your target audience. However, not all colors work the same for different companies. Different colors may appeal to other people depending on their moods and personalities. For this reason, color psychology in branding and design is critical.
3- Find Inspiration And Check Your Competition
Designing your logo can be overwhelming. You and your team may have many ideas, but how can you determine which one works and doesn’t? It’s also a great idea to find inspiration from successful brands or even your competition. Looking for inspiration and analyzing your competition will give you a rough idea of what the audience wants and make your brand stand out.
4- Ensure All Design Elements Go Together
A good logo design system incorporates color palettes, typography, line and shape design systems, lighting, and text. Once you’ve decided on your color palette and the message you want your logo to convey to your potential customers, it’s time to combine these elements and make some adjustments if some aspects don’t go well in harmony.
First, you need to choose the right fonts and place them appropriately in the design. This is where typography comes in. Typography is an art and design process that makes letter-form visuals readable, legible, and attractive when printed. The basic structure of typography involves choosing appropriate typefaces, font sizes, point sizes, line spacing, and character spacing.
Next is the shape. Circles and curves give off a complete, natural, and relaxing feeling, while edges and angles give off confidence and leadership. Lines represent growth and balance, while organic shapes like clouds or leaves convey creativity or the natural process of things.
Lastly, you need to ensure that the size of your logo is visible and recognizable. You need to work on the size of the texts or the overall look so people can see the logo from a far distance.
Final Thoughts
The design of your logo goes a long way in promoting your business. If your logo looks unprofessional or confusing, your logo may not effectively communicate your values and messages. It will fail to inspire and motivate your customer base.
So, before designing your business logo, you should think first about your brand identity to effectively convey the same to your customers. You should also choose a color scheme to bring out the emotions you want people to feel when looking at your brand. Next, get inspiration from timeless logos and check your competition. Lastly, ensure that all elements, such as colors, shapes, sizes, and typography, go well together to create an effective logo that will stand out above the rest.
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