10 Logo Design Tips to Take Your Brand to the Next Level

Whenever one starts a new business, the first thing that comes in contact with the audience is the company's logo. A logo is a visual image or a symbol that is used to represent a company. It is the face of the brand.
Some people think that designing a logo is as easy as just putting together a few elements. But the fact is a lot goes when it comes to designing a great logo. A logo may seem to be a small icon, but it represents the whole company and communicates its vision, mission, values, and more. With this blog, we will be sharing ten logo design tips that can help you in taking your brand to the next level.

Let’s get started!

1) Define your brand identity:

Brand identity is how a brand wants to be viewed by the target audience. This identity represents the brand and helps in communicating with the audience clearly. Your logo must convey your brand identity. And for that, you first need to identify the core persona of your brand. Having a clear understanding of this will assist you in choosing the best design. Here are a few questions you can ask yourself to define your brand identity:

• Why did we establish this company?
• What beliefs and values are crucial for the company?
• What sets us apart from the competitors?
• What three words best describe our brand?
• What are the three words we want our customers to use to define our brand?

2) Find inspiration for your design:

The difficult part in the design process can be finding the right inspiration. Here are some tips for you:

   a) Start with a brainstorm: You may be a conceptual individual who likes to begin by collecting vocal ideas. A right brainstorming session with your peers and experts can help you pin down the look and feel that you are trying to accomplish.
Following steps will assist you in pulling out creative ideas:

• No matter whether you like an idea or not, write down all the ideas that come out during the session. You never know which idea can help you in getting a great solution.
• Have a list of words that can best describe your brand. Think like your target audience and keep in mind what could be important for them.
• Make sure you give equal importance to the ideas of all the people present in the brainstorming session.

    b) Create a mood: If you are someone who gets a better idea by seeing things, then you must create a mood board. A mood board is a collage of visuals, images, and other objects that are created to find out how to create a theme or style for a project. Just collect all the inspirational images and create your mood board.

3) Evaluate your competitors:

Which is the best place to get ideas? Your competitors! Research your competitors and figure out what design trends they are following. While researching them, also find out what makes them different from you and how you can highlight those dissimilarities in your logo design. Make sure you differentiate your brand from your competitors. If for instance, they are following a monochrome style logo design, you may think of opting a colorful design for your brand. It will help you in getting the required attention.

4) Choose your design style:

Once you are clear about the idea, it’s time to start translating them into design. At this stage, there are a lot of different components that play an important role. Separating every element will help you take one step at a time instead of being besieged with the entire design at once. While creating a logo, the foremost thing you would like to do is to select the right aesthetic design for your brand.

• Classic: A classic style provides a better staying power and assists in reaching a wider audience.
• Vintage/Retro: Vintage logos evoke the feeling of nostalgia. It conveys the audience that the history is crucial for a brand and everything they sell is done correct.
• Modern & Minimalist: Most of the brands choose to have this style because they feel that this style will communicate how fresh and modern they are. This style uses simple lines, lots of white space, and minimal details.
• Handmade: This type of style works great with other powerful aesthetic ideas like vintage to portray the message accurately.
• Fun & Quirky: This is the most common choice among brands that have young target audience. This type of style is colorful and cute and often uses icons that create positive or friendly vibes.

5) Choose the right type of logo:

The next thing you want to consider is the type of logo you want. Here are five major categories of logos to choose from:

• Wordmarks: These are the type of logos that focuses on brand name only. Example: Google, Visa, Coca-Cola, etc.
• Symbol/Pictorial marks: These are the type of logos where a company uses an icon or a symbol that resonates with the brand. Example: Twitter, Target, Apple, etc.
• Lettermark/Monograms: These types of logos usually have initials of the brand name. Example: IBM, HP, HBO, etc.
• The Emblem: These types of logos consist of text integrated into an icon or symbol like crests and badges. Example: Starbucks, Harley-Davidson, Harvard University, etc.
• The Combination mark: These are the type of logos that get created by combining wordmark and symbol logo types. Example: Lacoste, Burger King, Doritos, etc.

6) Know your colors:

In design, colors play an important role. They are powerful forms of communication. They instantly catch the attention and give life to the visual illustration. They have a huge impact on the emotions and behavior of the audience. They communicate with them at a subconscious level. Every color has a different meaning. Therefore, it is important to know the color psychology. Here are the meanings of the most common colors used in the logo design:

• Blue: Secure, Trustworthy, Responsible
• Red: Stimulating Passionate, Vibrant
• Pink: Loving, Calm, Feminine
• Green: Peaceful, Natural, Healthy
• Black: Prestigious, Exclusive, Luxe
• Yellow: Cheerful, Friendly, Warm
• White: Practical, Pure, Innocent.

If you want to use different colors in the logo design, use it only when you want to represent your brand as innovative, fun, and child-friendly. If you are a start-up and have a limited variety of goods, then it’s better to choose one or two colors.

7) Choose right typography:

Similar to color, typography also plays an important role in design. No matter how great your idea is, the wrong typography can destroy the whole design. According to a famous graphic designer, Matthew Carter, “Type is a beautiful group of letters, not a group of beautiful letters.” There are majorly four types of fonts:

• Serif: At the end of each letter, these fonts have little feet at the end and are traditional in comparison to other font types. Example: Times Roman
• Sans Serif: Unlike Serif, these fonts have modern and clean look like Arial or Helvetica.
• Script: These fonts are like cursive handwriting.
• Display: These are highly decorative fonts and catch the attention immediately.

When you combine different fonts, typography can become powerful. So, it’s important to have an understanding of font pairing.

8) Construct a design brief:

Now that you are clear with the above points, it’s time to build a creative design brief. It will help the designer understand more about your project. The more they know, the better they can communicate in the initial design steps.

9) Hire a logo designer:

Your logo is ready to design. It’s time to hire an expert to give it a visual form. Many start-ups cannot afford to hire a full-time graphic designer. In that case, there are two options to get the logo designed:

• Logo Maker tool: Nowadays, many companies provide an online logo maker tool. These tools let users create a logo within minutes. To use the tool, one doesn’t require any technical skills. But before choosing the final tool, learn the advantages and features provided by each tool.
• Freelance graphic designer: Another great way to get the logo design within a set budget is to hire a freelancer. A lot of companies provide the services of getting people connected with professional graphic designers globally. Designhill is one such platform that lets users get connected with thousands of professional graphic designers globally. The designers provide best quality designs at affordable prices.

10) Get your logo in vector files:

In whichever way you choose to get your logo design, don’t forget to get your logo design file in vector format. Vector files are easily edited, perfectly scalable, and does not occupy much disk space. PNG, EPS, SVG, AI are the common vector file formats.

Conclusion:

As the saying goes, the first impression is the last impression. Make it a good one! If you have any questions, leave it in the comment section below. We would love to help you! Good Luck ☺