4 Easy Steps To Creating The Perfect Logo For Your Brand

You know logos are important, but you know why? The more you break it down, you more you understand just how crucial logos are for any business. Whether for new, unknown brands or household names, logo design performs a number of functions:

• improving brand recognition
• incentivizing sales
• grabbing the attention of customers
• showcasing your brand’s personality
• wordlessly explaining what you do
• demonstrating your competitive advantage
• creating the right first impression with new customers
• encouraging brand loyalty

Of course, that’s what good logos do. If you’re not dedicating enough effort to your logo, it will work against you in all those areas.

Luckily, getting an amazing logo doesn’t have to be difficult or time-consuming. Below, we summarize the 4 steps to a successful logo, explained by our friends 99designs in their free ebook How to Get the Perfect Logo for Your Brand. Just follow along to realize the perfect logo for your brand.

#1 Define Your Brand

 

Logos are never one-size-fits-all; they’re most effective when customized to suit a brand’s particular needs. Before you start on your logo, you need to know what your logo is supposed to communicate. Consider these aspects of your business or organization:

• Mission: What are your business goals? What are your brand values? How do these impact your overall business strategy?
• Target Audience: Who are you trying to reach? This should have an enormous impact on your brand personality and how your logo communicates.
• Competitive Advantage: What makes you a better choice than your competitors? Is this something you can explain pictorially or in a few words?
• Brand Personality: Are you a fun, laid-back brand or more serious and trustworthy? Brand personality largely influences the artistic style, voice, and message of your final logo.

If you’re struggling to pin down your brand’s identity, try listing 25-30 adjectives that describe what kind of business you are (or want to be) and how you want to be perceived.

#2 Research Logo Design

A little research before diving into the design process can be extremely beneficial, whether just for inspiration or simply learning how to optimize your logo. Aside from being prepared, you’ll find you have more ideas — and better ones — going forward.

For starters, you want to research what your competitors are doing with their logos. You don’t want to copy anything too similar to them, so try to avoid trends for the sake of trends. Also pay attention to what they do that works, and where there’s room for improvement.

If you’re looking for general inspiration, try browsing collections of logos online. Pay attention to color schemes, typography, styles and imagery that stand out at you. These will come in handy in the next step…

#3 Design Options

For the actual designing of the logo, you have three options, each with their own specific pros and cons.

• DIY: The most basic option is to do it yourself using logo maker software. This is only recommended if you have nothing by way of a budget: graphic design is a nuanced and technical skill, so unless you have extensive training or lots of experience, you’re going to miss out on design opportunities you don’t even know exist.
• Agency: Hiring a design agency lands on the other end of the spectrum. Agencies offer a full suite of talented designers to work on your logo — however, the cost is steep. Although it’s the option that involves the least effort from you, it’s also the most expensive.
• Freelance Designer: In the middle of those two options is hiring a freelance designer: you still receive all the benefits of an experienced professional, but generally at a cheaper cost than an agency. You can easily find a designer yourself by filtering your specific criteria, such as their skill level or which industry they specialize in.

Even if you hire a freelance designer or work with an agency, it still helps to have an idea of what kind of logo you want. The less your designers have to guess, the more accurate it will be to your vision.

#4 Test Your Logo

Lastly, you want to make sure your logo works for all your purposes and has been tested. Show it to your coworkers, company stakeholders, friends and family to collect a wide range of opinions.

You will want to check that it properly represents your brand. Does it express your brand personality? Will it speak to your target audience? Does it differentiate you from your competitors?

Next, test the more practical applications. For example, does it scale well? Is it still legible on mobile screens or does it lose something when shrunk? If you’re going to print it on marketing materials (pens, T-shirts, hats), make sure it’s not too heavy on the detail. Does it maintain the same quality as the digital copy in print? You may want to consider variations on your logo, such as different sizes or color schemes for different uses.

Takeaway

Logo design can be a pretty technical field — graphic design, in general, is a technically precise discipline, but when you add the marketing and advertising aspects involved in logo design, it gets exponentially more difficult. We’ve just summarized the basics, but if you want a more in-depth look into how to ace your branding, featuring dozens of samples from real companies, get the free logo design ebook.

 

 

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