You shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but sometimes you do need a few logo design tips to help you reach your audience.
We, humans, are created to process quickly and to judge whatever we see instantly. It doesn’t even happen consciously. Your logo is the first thing people will notice about your business, so if people don’t like how it looks, you won’t gain any traction, even when your products are amazing.
The perfect trademark is unique and straightforward, showing a bright design and brand identity. Your logo should also be easy to use in all types of situations, like online on your website, and offline on flyers, billboards, business cards, and more. Today, we’ve collected eight tips for you with tips for creating a logo.
Table of Contents
Find out your companies DNA
To find out how to start building your brand DNA, you must ask yourself two questions:
- What does my company do?
- What does my company do it for?
If you don’t have an answer yet, you can’t start building your brand, and especially your logo. With the help of these questions, you’ll be able to find your target audience and to start shooting for the stars.
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As a second step, you should figure out your brand personality and the vibes it gives off. Are you serious of nature, or more outgoing and youthful?
All these elements combined, you have your business DNA ready to use. It will help you to create a trademark that allows representing who you are, what you do, and for whom. If it helps, print it out and hang it on a visible space to remind yourself.
Take a look at Apple’s logo. There is no phone or laptop to be seen. However, their apple is missing a bite (or byte). It’s a smooth design with no jagged edges, just like their products.
Keep it simple
Most professional graphic designers already know this, but it doesn’t hurt to repeat it: keep it simple. It’s easy to go overboard with colors, shapes, and images. While you may intend for them to have a hidden meaning, or perhaps you liked them because they are pretty, it’s too much. Simplicity keeps your logo memorable, understandable, and beautiful.
Just look at Nike. Their ‘Swoosh’ design is one of the simplest motions you can imagine. However, they have become trendy over the years.
It stands for power, speed, and movement. Yet, it’s straightforward, potent, and clean. You can size it up or down as much as you’d like without damaging details or meaning.
Indulge yourself in color psychology
The way you use colors is fundamental for your logo. Color sets the mood, and even evokes certain emotions in your audience.
Here are some of the most common meanings behind colors, take a look at them, and find the ones that suit your business personality. What happens when you combine two?
- Black: Power, Precision, Credible, Strength
- Green: Hunger, Calm, Excitement
- Blue: Authority, professionalism, safety, credibility
- Orange: Fun, creativity, energetic, friendliness
- Yellow: Youthfulness, positivity, dynamic
- Purple: Riches, magic, mysteries, imagination, knowledge
- Brown: Earthly, reliable, steady, historic
- White: Cleanliness, fresh, natural, simplistic
When you combine more than one color, you need to make sure that the meanings behind them don’t clash. A clash between colors can repel potential clients, and it turns people away from your logo. If you want to find multiple colors that work well together, we advise using a color wheel to find complementary ones.
You may think that one logo color is annoying. However, McDonald’s begs to differ.
The golden (or yellow) arch is known throughout the entire world, and especially kids are quick to recognize it. Using yellow, McDonald’s portray themselves to be youthful, fun, and energetic. They transcended language and are now known as a happy place where you can eat fast food.
Trigger your audience’s emotions
Before you can start working on your logo design, you have to grab the attention of your audience. The best way to go at it is by triggering an emotion. When you look at health companies, for example, they often use soothing colors like light blue and green. Then, they also use positive images, like nature, birds, or happy people. It brings out feelings of joy in their audience. Positive and robust emotions help you connect to your audience in the blink of an eye. So, what emotion do you want to trigger in your audience?
Amazon has an ingenious way of triggering the emotions of their clients. The way they positioned their arrow indicates that Amazon has almost everything for sale. The way the arrow is curved makes it look like a happy smiley face to evoke positive emotions in their customers.
Use matching fonts!
Like colors and shapes, fonts also have a “personality.” This personality can convey feelings and emotions to your audience. When you are looking for logo making tips, then you should know what you need to choose a typeface with a personality that suits your brand. However, to do that, you need to get into the head of your customers.
You have to ask yourself: what font is most compatible with my brand? When your brand is traditional, a high-class serif font will suit you, while a slab serif works better with a “handmade” logo design.
A company that focuses on children’s products or services might use squiggly handwriting to make it seem as if a child had written it. Typefaces like this perfectly convey a message without you even needing to use an image.
However, please make sure you don’t mismatch your font and brand identity. You need to send the right message to your audience while being unique at the same time. Times New Roman and Comic Sans are overused, and it’s time for a new font. Find something that spices up your brand, but make sure it stays legible and is easy to resize.
Make it move
While you don’t necessarily need to use a logo animation, you should show some dynamics in your design. It gives it a virtual boost.
Take a look at the Twitter logo. The first concept was cute, but it didn’t have much dynamic to it. However, the new design makes the bird look like it’s mid-flight.
When you own a beer brewing company, you may be inclined to use a beer bottle. However, a lot of other breweries use this same image, and they’re all stationary. Alter the design by adding beer, foam, and making it look like it’s pouring. You’re so close to tasting it!
The same goes for a fishing company with a motionless fish on its design. A simple curve in the fish, or adding a hook, and a line can easily add some movement to the picture.
Be able to scale it
To scale an image means to resize it into something more suitable. This detail is especially important since your logo will get printed in more than one size. For instance, you will probably print business cards containing your logo, but perhaps you also want to have company t-shirts. So, your logo needs to be able to scale up and scale down. When you are attending a con, you will want to have pens with your logo. Then, your logo must be visible and without losing detail. Low-quality logos will become illegible when resized, so if that happens to you, you need to redesign it.
To prevent that, make sure your logo is legible in all sizes from the get-go.
Keep working on it
Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither is your brand. Even the most famous brands were content with their original designs for some time before they started tinkering with them.
It’s only logical that you don’t want to rebrand, but sometimes it’s wiser for a company to change its layout to keep its customers and success. So, feel free to keep working on your logo design until you’re delighted with it.
If you’re not sure yet about what you’ve designed, you can test it out in various places, like the corner of your website, social media pages, or stickers. The more you test it, the high the chances are that you will need to redesign it later.
Now onto you
By using these logo design tips 2020, you will be able to create a logo that captures the attention of your audience and gets them interested. Are you ready to start using these logo design tips to good use? Now is the moment to design your perfect logo!
