The logo is an essential part of the brand identity of any company, large or small, and regardless of its profile.
A logo can contain just the name of a company or certain symbols or shapes, or both. Whichever elements you opt for when creating a logo, it is important to bear in mind that it is part of the ‘calling card’ of your company or brand. And we know well that first impressions are the most important and the most lasting and difficult to change.
The logo also not only helps to attract attention, but is a visual statement that conveys the essence of the brand to the target audience.
Here is a short 6-step guide to help you design an effective and attractive logo for yourself or your clients.
1. Understanding the brand
The essence of any logo is the personality of the brand, its characteristics. Make a list of essential questions, such as:
- What kind of products or services does the brand offer?
- What is the idea behind the brand name?
- What kind of brand is it?
- What are the brand values?
- What kind of message does the brand want to convey?
- What is the industry and what is the competition?
- Who is the target audience?
- What (if already established) are the brand style elements (colours, fonts, etc.)
Once you have a clear picture of your brand and its values, you will have a basis from which to start building your logo, and this leads us to the next step.
2. Get familiar with the basics
To avoid a busy and sloppy look keep me: choose simplicity. A logo should be easy to recognise at a glance and easy to reproduce in different formats and sizes.
As a general rule: limit yourself to one, at most two fonts and a maximum of three colours.
Remember: a logo should look good in both large and small designs, such as business cards.
Also, colours, as mentioned, define brand identity, but it is good to study colour theory as well, so that you can identify which colours would be more appropriate based on the emotional response each colour and colour combination elicits.
3. Choose font
When you’ve started to get an idea of what you want your logo to look like, you can move on to choosing a font. Choosing one font or another says a lot about your brand, so finding the right one is very important.
There is a huge range of fonts to choose from, but we advise you to start with the standard ones and familiarise yourself with them, then consider buying a custom font and why not create your own.
Even if you start with a standard font variant, that doesn’t mean things will be boring: experiment with bold or italic font variants, combine upper and lower case, add shadows, change the spacing or try variations of letter overlays. As you can see, creativity is the key!
4. Get inspired
Of course every logo is unique, but, especially if you’re just starting out, it doesn’t hurt to take inspiration from logos with a tradition or simply those you like.
Study, research and see if a current logo trend or a particular logo appeals to you and then try to find out what appeals to you, what you like and don’t like, what you would do differently, what elements inspire you and how you can adapt them to your requirements and concept.
5. Try
Once you’ve set your goals, done your research and familiarised yourself with the basic tools and concepts, you can start experimenting. Sketch out different variations, use your creativity and the information you’ve gathered to make several variations of your logo.
Once you have more variations and as you adapt your sketch to the new observations, you will see that your ideas and your design will become more refined and in the end you will have more variations from which you can choose the most suitable.
6. Review
Once you’ve chosen one or more options, it’s good to take some time to detach. Take a break for a few hours, maybe even until the next day and then come back to your design. When you’re working hard on a project it’s easy to get bored or lose sight of the big picture, so it’s important to take a break.
Once you’ve taken a break, go back and revise, remember the main points and concepts you wanted to have in your logo, go back to the questions at the beginning and adapt, correct (if necessary) the final result.
Although creating a logo can seem like a daunting and overwhelming task, once you have a strategy and know the steps you need to take, you’ll find that you can make increasingly successful and attractive designs. The important thing is to do your research, have courage and don’t get discouraged.