Designing the right logo is vital for your brand image. A logo can become an important factor in brand recognition, probably more so than your company name and so it is important that you spend time researching exactly what type of colors, fonts and design work would best represent your brand message.
Here we outline top tips to consider when first deciding upon what kind of logo to use:
Research, Research, Research – Depending on whether this is a new brand design or a redesign will decide your research approach. The first thing you are going to want to do is perform a SWOT analysis and also think about the profile of the customer you want to attract. How old are they?, What do they like to do? This kind of profiling will allow you to identify not only your brand values that should be represented in the logo but also the customer who may be turned off by too flashy of a logo or may find it too boring to interest them.
If you are doing a redesign of you brand, the research you do will be vital! Customers and even your staff can hold strong identities to brand images, changing it without asking for feedback can be detrimental to your brand as a whole.
Avoid Stock Images – Purchasing stock images can seem a great idea to the less creative of us or the budget conscious but avoid the temptation to choose the easy way out. Stock images often get over used and you may end up with the same image as countless other businesses. It is amazing how many people recognise a stock image and this may affect how professional your company looks to your clients. Your logo should be as unique as your company.
Colors – There have been many studies into how colors can provoke different reactions in people and their emotional responses. A great study into this can be found on the logo design blog. According to the study it is better and more cost effective to choose only at most two main colors in your logo. These should be complimentary to each other. In order to be complimentary they need to be exactly opposite on the color spectrum for instance Red/Green or Blue/Yellow. When you think of the most popular brands out there you can see this represented in their own logo colors. For example Visa has the blue and yellow combination. Colors can also be used to stir emotions in your customers. For example great research was carried out in the McDonalds logo. It was found that the combination of red and yellow evoked hunger in people. This is where the research you have done earlier can help in deciding exactly what message or reaction you want to promote in anyone seeing your logo. Do you want to portray fun and warmness in your client – then orange is a good choice, have a health product or service – then green can promote health, wellbeing and fitness.
One Size Fits All–Remember to keep it simple. A complicated logo might look great on a website and other printed material but how about business cards, social media icons or promotional gifts? Once you shrink the logo down it’s in danger of becoming illegible. It’s important that all marketing material has the same design image to build brand recognition and keep your business looking professional.
About the Author
Neil Maycock writes about Design, Marketing And Digital Printing for yorkprintcompany.co.uk.