A brand’s logo is more than just an image that you put on social media and your website. Your logo is truly at the heart of your entire business. It represents your brand on promotional advertisements, product packaging, and everywhere online.
Your logo is how customers will recognise you, what will draw in new potential customers, and how your employees will make themselves known as part of the business.
When it comes to logo design, it is important to create a logo that represents all the best that your business has to offer. Your logo should capture the attention of your audience and make them want to learn more about your business.
With this list of do’s and don’ts, you will be able to create a unique logo that will be clean, modern, and stand out from the rest.
What Is a Logo?
A logo is a gateway to your business. It should be on every webpage, product packaging, and email you send to customers. Your logo should be unique and recognisable, so that whenever a potential customer sees it they know who you are.
Truly, your logo should capture the essence of your business.
Your logo can be a symbol that resonates with your brand or can include your company’s name within it.
For example, Apple uses a symbol as a logo, while Samsung’s logo includes their name. Both of these are creative and design decisions, but they will impact how your audience sees and recognises your brand.
1. Keep Your Logo Simple
Logos are meant to be timeless. Trends change every year, but you cannot completely change your logo whenever something new becomes popular. For this reason, we recommend that you keep your logo simple.
By doing this, you can ensure that your brand is always relevant and will never look dated.
While it can be tempting to try out the latest fads and trends, keeping a timeless logo will allow your brand to stand the test of time. Since your logo will appear on everything related to your brand, it is important for it to look good 5, 10, and 20 years from now.
This isn’t to say you cannot change up your marketing or packaging during seasonal holidays or other important events. This is very doable, but making sure your logo is consistent and recognisable is key.
- Do: Stick with a classic look and feel
- Don’t: Follow temporary trends and change up your logo every couple of years
2. Play Around With Fonts and Uppercase Letters
Your logo’s font is an insight into your company’s personality and what you offer. It lets customers know if your business has a whimsical feel, if you are straightforward and serious, or somewhere in the middle.
Allowing customers to understand the feel of your business is a great way to draw in the correct target audience.
For example, let’s say you’re looking for a new lawyer. You see an ad for a new law office and decide to visit their website. When the page loads, you see all of their branding is in a handwritten, curly font.
This is the exact opposite of the type of font you would expect to see from a lawyer, and may put you off of their services.
Besides the font, another way to make your logo unique is to play around with different capitalisations. Does your brand name look better in all caps? What about your tag line?
These can change the emphasis of your logo and bring your customers eyes to different parts within the icon.
- Do: Find a font that fits the feel of your business, use upper and lowercase letters to draw customers’ attention to important sections of your logo
- Don’t: Use a font that is too whimsical or serious for your business
3. Stick to Your Brand Colours
While your packaging or promotional material may use different colours than those you’ve chosen to represent your brand, it is important to make sure your logo continuously uses your brand colours.
Colored branding is an important part of your brand’s personality and identity. By choosing the right colour scheme for your brand, you can give off different moods or feelings, generate more clicks and sales, and even draw in customers.
Due to this, it is no surprise that your logo should always be in the correct colours.
- Do: Keep your logo in your standard brand colours to ensure recognisability
- Don’t: Constantly change the colour of your logo
4. Take Up Space With Your Logo
No logo will look appealing if it is too cramped. Similarly, it is not good to have your logo be too spread out, either.
For many businesses, a simple icon is not enough to fully explain their brand and what they offer. If this is the case, you can add in your name and tagline to your logo. Taglines are also known as slogans, and are used to encapsulate what your brand stands for in one phrase.
If you don’t have a tagline, don’t fret! You can take up space by increasing the size of your font or even adding in another shape or icon.
While it is important to make use of all of the space you have for your logo, it is also important to leave enough space between your logo and the negative space around it.
If your logo is looking claustrophobic, you can always decrease the font and shape size, or increase the frame size around it.
- Do: Make your logo fill up the entire space provided within the frame, but leave some negative space
- Don’t: Cram your logo into a frame that is too small
5. Make Your Logo Scalable
Your logo should be on everything your company makes, advertises, or posts. Whether it’s the header on your website, a sticker on packaging, or your profile photo on Facebook, your logo must be scalable in order to fit each different dimension you need.
Logos that are too busy and intricate may be difficult to scale down and use as an Instagram profile picture. Contrastingly, logos that are plain may come across as boring when they are used to fill large spaces.
While there is no correct way to build a logo and everyone has different tastes, making sure that your logo is a high resolution file (preferably a vector or transparent PNG) that can be scaled to various sizes means that no matter what, your logo will be legible and look professional.
- Do: Make your logo a high resolution vector or PNG so it can be scaled to various sizes
- Don’t: Use a small, detailed icon that cannot be clearly scaled up or down
6. Create a Logo that Stands out
The best tip for creating a brilliant logo is to make it stand out from the rest. In the end, you want your customers to be able to pick out your logo from the crowd and remember it long after they’ve left your shop or website.
- Do: Create a logo that pops and draws in your audience
- Don’t: Create a logo that looks similar to competition, or is not eye-catching
Your Logo Can Make or Break Your Business
Some of the most recognisable logos across the world are simple. Think about logos such as Apple’s, Pepsi’s or McDonald’s. You can probably easily picture each of them. Why do they stand out? It most likely has to do with a positive association to their products.
If you create a logo that represents your brand’s identity and values, and tells consumers who you are, people are more likely to be able to recall your logo and think of your brand.
To find out more about growing your brand’s presence, contact ProfileTree
