16 Jun Designing the Best Logo for Your Business

Think about some of your favorite brands or businesses. Can you see their logo in your mind? Hopefully, that answer is yes! Good logos are memorable, and memorable logos lead to memorable brands. When it comes to your business, a logo represents your brand in a single small image. Some logos have more detail than others, but the best logos have a seemingly simple design. This doesn’t mean simple-looking logos are always easy to design, however. The best logos — even the most minimalist — require expert logo design practices based on nuanced principles and elements of design.

In this digital age, your logo will appear everywhere as the face of your business — including your merchandise, website, social media accounts, advertising and more. Every business — no matter your industry or size — needs a strong logo to tie in your brand image and to make lasting impressions on members of your target market.

Let’s take a closer look at why a business logo matters, what to consider when designing a logo, and logo design mistakes to avoid.

Does a Business Logo Really Matter?

Good logos are great to have, but they aren’t necessary, right? In today’s market, you really do need a good business logo. When you think of a friend or family member, you likely think of their face before their name. The same is true for brands and logos. The goal is to make customers instantly associate an image with your business for lasting impact.

Here are just a few of the reasons your business needs a good logo:

• People are visually-oriented — Even text counts as visual communication, and a logo design is the next step of visually communicating your brand’s identity beyond just your business name. Combining the branding elements of your business name and logo will naturally make your business more memorable to customers.

• Create branded merch — Being able to place a logo on your branded merchandise is a reliable, age-old marketing tactic. Shirts, pens, business cards, etc., are easy ways to give prospective and current customers something tangible to remember your business by later on, which is enhanced when your logo is well-designed.

• Develop a consistent design — Your logo will be the base for all your other brand marketing. Developing consistent design elements will strengthen the image of your business to your customers, and it will make creating new designs much easier.
  
• Stand out from the crowd — Thanks to the internet, markets have become more competitive than ever before. A strong logo design will help your business stand out from the crowd to your audience.

Consumers value good logo designs, whether they fully realize it or not. A strong logo communicates to your audience that your business is the real deal and cares about your mission and customers.

What to Consider When Designing a Logo

So you know you need a logo, but where do you start when it comes to designing a logo?

The best logos are created by thinking seriously about colours, fonts, space, shapes and lines. Think about iconic logos like McDonald’s, Amazon, Starbucks or Apple. All of these logos initially appear simple, but their designers have expertly crafted a memorable design by considering each of these elements. If you want your logo to look great everywhere you put it and stand out to your customers, you’ll need to pay close attention to the principles of design.

Consider these 10 most important design principles for creating your logo, according to Canva:

1. Embrace simplicity — Simple designs are easy to look at and easy to remember. The most successful modern logo designs have moved away from complicated details and have instead moved toward bold and simple designs. Apple, for example, has increasingly made their logo more simple, yet more iconic over the past 40 years.

2. Remember your audience — Your logo exists to attract your target audience, so it’s important to keep them in mind when designing. Consider your audience’s demographics and how those details might affect what will be visually appealing to them. Of course, while it can be helpful to make sure your logo falls in line with your competition, it can also help your brand stand out by strategically breaking any logo design norms.

3. Be unique — If you want your logo to be memorable, it needs to be unique. Looking at other logo designs can be helpful for inspiration, but you’ll want to avoid borrowing heavily from those ideas. You want your logo to look like your logo, not someone else’s! Try designing a logo with the origins of your business in mind. This will make your logo stand out as unique and well-connected with your brand, thus becoming more memorable to customers.

4. Keep it timeless — Logo design changes happen, but it’s best to create a logo and stick to it as much as possible. Creating an overly trendy design can result in your logo looking outdated within a few years. Instead, try to make a design that lasts or could easily be adapted over time. Timeless logos often focus on text over images.

5. Make it look great everywhere and in any size — A versatile and scalable logo is extremely important for today’s marketing needs. Your logo should look equally great as a small digital icon, on merchandise or on large physical spaces. Remember to also use proper colour formatting to ensure the colors look right and remain consistent across all mediums where your logo exists.

6. Use the right font — If your logo uses text, choosing the right font and typeface is crucial to your brand’s image. The most basic font choice will be between a classic serif or a more modern sans serif font. You can design your typeface on your own, but it’s also perfectly fine to take an existing one and customize it for your brand’s needs.

7. Choose colour intentionally — Colour theory is one of the most important elements of designing a logo. Popular logo colours include red and blue, and many brands limit the number of colours in their logo to two at maximum. This doesn’t mean you can’t use more than two colors, but more colors can lead to a less flexible and less memorable design. Sticking with one or two main brand colours in your logo will tie your branding and overall image together. Make sure your colour choices match your brand!

8. Create a monochrome version — Yes, colour is important. However, your logo will sometimes look best in black, white or grayscale depending on your needs. Create your logo so that its design will clearly stand out to our audience, whether in colour or not. This will help with the memorability and flexibility of your logo design.

9. Focus on balance — Balance in terms of design does not always mean equal on all sides. However, effective logo designs make good use of balance through shape and negative space. Symmetry can be great, but using principles like the rule of thirds can also help your logo make a statement. The human eye naturally tries to find a sense of balance in images, and this balance creates a strong connection with your audience.

10. Maintain consistency — As we’ve discussed, a logo is the face of your brand and the center of your branding strategy. It needs to fully resonate with your brand’s origin, mission, audience, and services. Inconsistencies in design will leave your audience feeling disconnected from your business.

Logo Design Mistakes to Avoid

Just as there are design principles to embrace when designing a logo, knowing the logo design mistakes to avoid can be just as helpful. 

Always keep these design mistakes in mind and avoid them:

• Complicating the design — As mentioned earlier, simple logos connect best with audiences. You can avoid making complex designs by keeping icons to a minimum, using as few colours as possible and keeping your design balanced.

• Having multiple versions — Aside from a monochrome and a colored version, it’s best to keep your logo to one design. This will make recognizing it easier for your customers, and it will keep your brand image consistent. If your logo doesn’t look right in a certain medium, then it likely means you have a poor logo design, not that you need another.

• Copying other designs — You can get inspired by other designs, but making your logo too similar to another is plagiarism that can get you in legal trouble. Your logo will also be less unique the more you borrow from other designs.

• Following trends — Logo designs do tend to follow trends over the years, but these changes are gradual and take decades to really hold their ground. Many trends simply don’t last. Following the latest design trends when it comes to your logo risks your design quickly becoming outdated. Instead, aim for a timeless, simple design.

Logo Design, Marketing and More

Designing a logo is the first step to developing or recreating your brand. If you don’t have the time, resources, skills or experience to design a logo, then there is no need to panic! Our graphic design and marketing team from Virtual Stacks Systems UK can help you develop a new brand image for your business, with supporting digital marketing campaigns to match.

As a full-service digital marketing agency, we have your business covered when it comes to logo design, web design, social media marketing and more. Contact us today to discuss your branding and marketing needs!