designing a logo
You’ve made it. You started a business and now you’re ready to start establishing your brand identity. You’ll have to create a color scheme, choose your fonts, and develop a voice that communicates exactly who you are. Designing a logo is one of the most important and exciting steps when building out your brand, but it can be challenging to know exactly how to do it right and there’s more to it than you might think. Think about the most iconic logos you’ve seen, some are highly creative and unique, while others are simple, concise, and easily recognizable. Regardless of what direction you go in, your logo should stand out and make a statement about what you offer and why.
A truly great logo isn’t just a couple of letters or a graphic, it tells a story. You will have to nail down your brand identity and all of the design elements that it involves first. Once you know your story and truly believe in it, all of these elements can come together to create a powerful logo design that has a lasting impact on your brand recognition. Here are some things to consider before you start your design journey.
Color
Color is one of the most impactful design elements and could be the reason customers choose you over your competitor. Psychology influences the way we perceive different colors and how they make us feel. This subconscious influence is very powerful so it’s worth it to put thought into this aspect of your brand. Think about color associations that are totally universal, pink representing femininity. Though we may try to distance ourselves from these associations, they are ingrained within us and it’s interesting to consider how that might have an impact on our shopping decisions.
Composition
When you create, it’s imperative to consider concepts that will draw attention to certain aspects and provide a dynamic visual hierarchy to your design. Composition involves many considerations, including which elements should be emphasized, the order each element should be viewed in, the balance and symmetry of each element and how all of them come together to form a unified piece. This is where you can get creative and try different things to see what works best for your brand, don’t be afraid to try something new and different.
Size/Shape
This is an important consideration for your logo as it will likely be displayed in many different locations such as your website, social media, marketing campaigns and advertisements. It may be helpful to have multiple logos for use in different places, and either a vector file that is infinitely scalable without losing image quality or multiple sizes of the image so it doesn’t appear differently when scaled up or down.
Readability
The most important consideration for your logo design is readability and visibility, you want your logo to be instantly recognizable and easy to read and understand. Great logos have such an impact often because there aren’t any excess elements distracting from the primary message. It can be valuable to be creative with color, texture, shape, and style but there is only so much you can do to stand out without your logo looking busy. Your customers should know it’s you as soon as they see your logo.
Style
The most fundamental and important step of designing your logo is style, there are many different logo styles that you will recognize instantly, but you may not have known that each style has a name and different advantages as well.
Wordmark – Example: Google
Wordmark logo styles are minimal and concise because they only include the words, usually just the name of the brand. They are professional and very straightforward, so they’re great for brands who are going for a minimal design strategy but it can be difficult to create a cohesive and interesting design as there are no other elements to support you. Your font style matters when designing a wordmark logo, use the element you do have wisely to create a unique design.
Lettermark – Example: HBO
Lettermark logos are similar to wordmark logos, usually using just the brand name’s initials. They can be very concise and minimal. This could also be an opportunity to play around with composition to create a dynamic visual hierarchy that draws attention to different letters. These types of logos are often lacking context however, and may not be able to tell the whole story of your brand.
Letterforms – Example: Mcdonalds
Letterforms are also typography based logos while they lack context even more so, as they only picture the first letter of a brand’s name. Some iconic logos feature just one letter, but for a new business, it might take some time before your brand is recognizable enough to pull off such a minimalistic design concept for your logo.
Pictorial Marks – Example: Apple
Pictorial marks are not typography based so they do not include words at all. These types of logos can tell a beautiful story but may not communicate enough about your brand especially if your business is new. You can of course have multiple logos, ones with typography and ones without, and use them according to your preferences or the brand’s needs.
Combination Marks – Example: Spotify
The final style is a combination of any of the previously mentioned styles, and is a great choice for brand’s who are looking to communicate as much as possible with their logo design. That doesn’t mean that your design has to be overly complex, however, as you’ll see in the example above combination marks can be surprisingly simple and communicative at the same time.
Designing a brand can be exciting and fulfilling but also a serious challenge. You don’t have to be a graphic designer, however, to create stunning designs that stand out. There are free tools to help you create logos that make the process simple and free from stress so you can focus on the things that matter. You might be surprised at how satisfying it can be to design something that speaks to you and to your brand, and it will certainly not go unnoticed by your future customers.
If you’re looking for ways to improve your business, increase your revenue and maximize conversions, it could be your platform that’s holding you back. Leave the advanced development work to the experts so you can focus on what you’re good at, creating a great experience for your customers. Schedule a consultation today to discover what Virid can do for you.
