By Tom Bourlet, The stag company.
Creating a great logo is an integral part of building your brand, making a design that people will quickly remember and associate instantly with your business the moment they spot it. The style you choose will depend heavily on the industry you’re part of and the image you’re trying to portray. Read on for our top tips on making your logo.
1) Study Your Industry
You don’t want to have a replica of your key competitors, but it is important to look at your industry, as people get used to a set type of logo and if it looks too different then people might confuse what industry you’re in. If you’re a bank then you should expect to have a professional logo, if you were to opt for something more creative you might face the risk of losing brand trust. Again, this isn’t to say you have to keep to the same as your competitors, but your logo should closely link to your industry.
2) Don’t Pigeonhole Your Brand
It is important to keep your logo close to your brands interests, but a common mistake is to focus on one aspect of your business, which can be a significant issue when looking to expand. Whether it’s localisation, or focusing on one area of trade you offer, if you think you might grow or broaden the business in the foreseeable future then this could be creating long term issues for yourself and require you to redesign the website in the future.
3) Make It Evergreen
Having worked with a brand in the past that was setting up a sports business, they wanted the location of the event to be replicated in the logo. The issue with this is future events would be held in different cities. Your logo needs to work for future occasions, if you make it time sensitive or focused on a single event, then it will need to be regularly redesigned and people might not know if you’re the same brand when looking at the new logo.
4) Be Unique
I’m not saying you need to reinvent the wheel, but by creating something that stands out, it can help to increase people considering your brand. This can also lower the chances of plagiarism against your designs. I love double entendre’s for this exact reason, they’re both unique and make you think about the double concept. They also will tend to get you featured in articles on clever logo designs, which can further help to build your brand.
5) Don’t Rush Picking The Right Typography
Tom Bourlet
Many people rush this aspect, but this should be a critical part of your brand guidelines. You will also start to see certain types that work better with certain brands, such as serif fonts for fashion companies or Trajan for movie billboards. Whatever you do, don’t pick Comic Sans, the most hated font in the world!
6) Stick To One Trick
Your logo doesn’t need to be overly complicated. In fact, all of the biggest brands have a very simple logo, focusing on one memorable image. Whether it’s the apple for Apple or the bird for Twitter, you can instantly name the brand the moment you see it. You need to pick the one trick to your logo and stick with that, don’t add in other factors as it will look too busy.
7) Ensure A Colourless Version Works
You might want to add some nice colours to your logo, however you should ensure the logo doesn’t require colour to work. There will be times when it will be printed in black and white, whether in print in a publication or on print-outs, or even if you were to create stationary. If the logo requires colour to work, then you will face difficulties in the future. One way to overcome this is to work on getting the logo perfect when focusing on the sketching stage. This will be done in black and white before adding colour, therefore it will be clear whether it works or not.
8) Put Your Faith In A Professional
Don’t waste hours of your time mucking around on Photoshop trying to create a logo when your time would be best spent on other tasks within your skill area. You should instead invest your money in a professional designer who has a strong reputation for making business logos. Don’t use a website where people offer set logo designs for cheap, they tend to use a set type and simply changing the wording for your brand and you will end up with a logo ridiculously similar to thousands of other brands.
