Logo Design Tips: Give Your Logo Some Mojo

Starting a business can be overwhelming- you have to set up everything from your business’s finances to optimizing the day-to-day operations to help your business thrive. Although creating a logo for your business may not be at the top of your priority list, a well-designed business logo is essential to creating a unique brand identity and a lasting impression on potential customers. An easily recognized and memorable logo can be one of your business’s most valuable marketing assets.

This post will help you understand the importance of having a logo, give you the best logo design tips, and offer suggestions on logo creation resources.

Logo Design-What’s In It?

A logo design is a representation of your company’s identity. Let’s compare your business’s logo to your appearance as a professional. For the type of impression you want to make, you’ll dress in a specific way. Your style choices, whether you wear a blue tie versus a red one, or whether you apply a red lipstick instead of a subtle gloss, convey different messages. The colors and styles you wear are a means of conveying a specific message to the people you interact with.

Logos allow you to convey your business’s identity and craft your audiences’ overall attitude towards your business. It’s not necessarily about explaining what you do, but rather, distinguishing your business from your competitors’ and making an impression on potential customers.

What Makes a Great Logo Design?

Logo Design Tip #1: Understand what appeals to your target market

While mission statements and company descriptions influence a person’s logical response, logos affect one’s emotions and attitudes. Logo design is a way of controlling how people feel about your company. That’s why it’s important to understand your audience’s emotional needs in regards to the services and products you offer.

People spend money when they have a need they wish to satisfy. Depending on the need they have, they’re looking to attain a different type of emotion. So, the first thing to think about when creating a logo is:

What kind of emotion is your target market trying to attain?

If you’re a lawyer, your clients want to feel confident and at ease. They value a professional experience, with as few obstacles and complications as possible. Your logo should convey a sense of organization and assurance.

On the other hand if you own a daycare center, your clients may want to feel happy and assured that their kids are in a safe and fun environment. Your logo should convey a sense of childlike happiness but also reliability. Combing the use of bright colors with blocky fonts may be one combination of color and style that pair well for a logo design.

To apply this exercise for your own use, read your business’s mission statement or description and highlight all of the adjectives. These adjectives express the characteristics you want to be associated with. Consider the types of emotions that these adjectives are associated with to know how you want people to feel when they see the image that represents your business.

Logo Design Tip #2: Research moods and emotions of different colors, shapes, and symbols

Once you’ve identified the emotions and attitudes you want your business to be tied to, learn about the different ways you can use colors, shapes, and symbols to convey that mood.

Colors
Color is one of the factors that can help your company’s brand elicit certain emotions. Bold or fluorescent colors can grab your audience’s attention but may not look professional. Subdued or muted colors may be great for professional services, but may not exclude the energy you want for your business. Each color has different implications and add nuance to your logo design. Take a look the associated moods and emotions each of these colors:

White: Simple, Calm, Balance
Black: Professional, Credible, Power
Purple: Magical, Religious, Creative
Blue: Dependable, Medical, Business-like
Green: Organic, Nature, Nurturing, Education
Yellow: Energetic, Dynamic, Positive
Orange: Creative, Energetic, Fruitful,
Red: Evocative, Exciting, Bold, Youthful
Brown: Traditional, Historical, Reliable

For more guidance for how your audience may react to different colors, check out this great color emotion guide made by The Logo Company.

Shapes
Curved lines verses sharp angles. Organic shapes versus geometric ones. Shapes also influence a person’s attitude. It’s helpful to understand the language of shapes, and distinguish the symbolism behind the various options. Get an intro to shapes through this visual guide.

For more logo design inspiration, enter the words you want associated with your business into a search engine to see the image results. It may also help to put a key word from your industry followed by the word “symbol” to see what comes up. Be sure to check out sites like Niice and Logopond that have extensive libraries of logos from across different industries to take inspiration from.

Logo Design Tip #3: Keep it simple

Since logos serve as another way for potential customers to identify your business, you need your audience to remember your logo easily. The simpler your logo design, the easier it will be for them to recognize it.

It’s more difficult for us to process an image that has a lot of visuals, thus making it harder to remember it at a later time. If you look at memorable logos (for example the Nike swoosh), you’ll see that success lies in simplicity. It’s the simplicity of the logo that allows it to last through the ages.

Remember, a logo is an emblem, not a manifesto of your business. The purpose of it is to be memorable, engaging and evoke a feeling about your business.

The following statistics based on the top 100 logos illustrate the importance of simplicity in logo design:

• 41% of the logos use text only
• 95% use only one or two colors
• 93% of the logos are simple enough to be viewable in smaller sizes

Logo Design Tip #4: Keep it versatile and scalable

Design a logo that will look great regardless of the size or medium. In the digital age, it’s important to design a logo that is versatile enough to be displayed or printed on all types of mediums and devices. Make sure your logo is not only scalable, but will also look good with a wide range of colors and on different textures. Remember, the more complex the logo design is, the worse it’ll look scaled to a small size.

Logo Design Generator

There are two common problems one encounters when using a logo generator: hidden costs and terrible options. While the latter can be easily identified, the former may be harder to spot. Of the various logo design tools out there, FreeLogoServices.com stands out. The site is user-friendly and transparent with the pricing of their services.

This logo generator particularly benefits small business owners because it’s quick, straightforward, and affordable. The site offers various designs to choose from, easily searchable because it’s categorized by industry. You can design and edit drafts of your logo for free, and purchase the completed artwork for $39.95. The site also offers you the option of paying $4.95 for one year of unlimited editing.

While most logo design services require that you download the software before use, freelogoservices.com allows you to create the logo to your liking before having to pay for it.

If you’re looking for free online tools to create your logo with, check out our guide to free visual marketing tools.

Image Credit: Borrarcher