11 Oct What Makes a Good Logo?
Every business needs to create a unique, distinct identity for itself in the market — and that all starts with logo design. Your business logo is the essence of your marketing and branding strategy by instantly capturing your brand identity and building familiarity among customers. An effective logo design helps build brand loyalty and set you apart from your competitors.
No matter the industry of your business, you need an effective logo to succeed both in the digital and physical world. Changing logo designs too often can inhibit your branding efforts, which is why it’s essential to settle on a timeless design and only make changes when it is absolutely necessary.
So, what makes a good logo? To make an effective logo, you need to focus on three main aspects — simplicity, colour, and design.
Keep It Simple
You may be inclined to think that more is better. However, simple designs are actually the most effective, but that doesn’t mean they are always easy to create. Logos that are simple are easy for consumers to identify, remember, and connect with. Simple doesn’t mean boring. Simple means instantly evoking your brand image without even having to make your audience think twice. Your simple design doesn’t necessarily have to have an image of your product or service, but some aspect of the design should reflect either your brand’s mission or your services.
Along with simplicity comes the attribute of versatility. The most effective logo designs look good no matter where they are placed — whether that be on your website, business cards, billboards, paper ads, stickers, and more. This is why it is especially important to use digital design methods in this modern age to create your logo, as you can easily adjust and test your prototype logo designs before deciding on a single design.
Great logos are simple — just think about the simplicity of Nike or McDonald’s!
Choosing the Best Colours for Your Brand
Equally as important to simplicity are your logo colour choices. Your logo colours should accurately represent how you want your consumers to perceive your brand image. Consumers should be instantly able to feel the intended emotions and understand your message. The colours of your logo should also be found across all of your branding materials in order to optimize your marketing strategy.
Use a colour wheel to help you decide the most effective colour choices. Just like simplicity of design, there should also be simplicity of colour. Too many colours can be an eyesore and difficult for consumers to remember. Your main logo colour will likely be most effective if it is a primary colour — blue, red, or yellow. However, secondary colours like orange, purple, and green can also be used as your main colour if they are more relevant to your business. For example, a gardening service would likely pick green as its main logo colour.
Your next colours should either be complementary or analogous to your main colour. Complementary colours are opposites on the colour wheel and are naturally more memorable to consumers (think about the success of red and green holiday colours) and evoke a more vibrant image, whereas analogous colours are neighboring colours on the wheel and evoke a more harmonious image. Accent colours like white, black, gray, and brown can go well with nearly all colour combinations.
Convey Your Message with an Image
The function of a logo is to quickly and effectively convey your brand’s message, while also helping your brand stand out in the dense crowd of competitors. A logo should be simple, as we considered above, but it also can’t be too simple.
Consumers can’t know what they are expected to understand if your design is too basic and unclear. The key to today’s logo design is finding the balance between simplicity and novelty. The McDonald’s arches and Nike’s swoosh are very similar in their simple, curved designs. What makes them stand out is the specific arrangement of those shapes. The designs can easily be replicated on paper by the average consumer because of their duality of simplicity and uniqueness. When designing a logo, consider basic shapes and lines — then go one step further to make something that hasn’t quite been done before. For example, you can’t call a plain circle your logo, but you can add small amounts of other shapes, lines, or colours to it to create an image that effectively conveys your brand’s message.
Additionally, it’s okay to leave a little ambiguity in your logo design. The most important part of your logo is that it evokes the message you want to evoke, which doesn’t always have to include an exact representation of the services or products your business offers. Consumers ultimately make decisions based on their emotions of a product or business, and your logo can play a big role in evoking the right emotions you want your consumers to experience when they make a purchase or, even better, become repeat customers.
Get a Professional Logo Design for Your Business
As we have discovered, .Consider Virtual Stacks Systems UK for professional logo design services that can help improve your branding and marketing strategy. Contact us today to discuss your design ideas!