What is Logo Design?
A logo design is a critical part of branding as it embeds itself in the psyche of a brand, a company, an organization, or a person. Different components are merged like colors, shapes, styles, and sometimes drawings, or icons to form the unique identity of a person or an organization.
The tactics of branding first classifies the business with the help of a logo as one of the most important elements for marketing a product and its effectiveness. A logo should and needs to be simple yet effective. It should be memorable, flexible, and well suited for the brand it contains, which allows for appropriate comprehension of the brand’s message and values by the audience.
The Importance of Logo Design
Swoosh, the Nike logo, and the siren figure of Starbucks. Logos are never mere decorations, but are the foundation of a brand. A logo is more than a symbol; it serves as the signature of the brand and is used in almost everything from the website to the advertising and products, and labels to business items. This goes a long way for brand recall and subsequently brand loyalty. Great logos like the Nike “swoosh” or the Starbuck’s siren show how powerful a great logo can contribute to a brand and the success of it.
How to design a Logo
Developing a logo requires a multi-faceted approach that incorporates structural elements of the brand’s vision and transforms it into ideas to be depicted. Here’s how to design the best logo step by step.
Step 1: Understanding the brand
This is the very first step and most important one. This involves the understanding of the vision, mission, values, personality, and audience of the brand. Make sure to do extensive research to gain insights into what the brand is and what sets it apart from the rest.
Let’s say you’re working on a logo for an ecologically friendly product line, your brand identity may be focused on sustainability, nature and wellbeing. This will affect your Logo Design decisions, for instance, colors used (green and earth colors), shapes (natural shapes) and fonts (minimal and graphic).
Step 2: Research for Logo Design
Start by gathering information regarding your industry and its competition. Existing logos in the particular industry should be studied to determine shared features and trends. This will enable you to see what has been done and how you can differentiate yourself.
Every good and bad brand should be analyzed. It is often illuminating to discover which logos work and which do not, because it helps to formulate good designing principles at the end of the day.
Step 3: Brainstorm and Sketch Ideas
Start the brainstorming process by articulating in writing the words that characterize your brand. From these words, you can derive the rough ideas that are to be sketched. This stage is all about ideation and is not expected to yield flawlessly polished pieces. You are encouraged to think beyond what would be deemed as reasonable within the confines of your business – during this stage, ideas should be generated rather than evaluated.
Step 4: Choose a Concept
The most potent ideas that best represent a brand identity should be picked from the sketches. Take into account how each concept correlates with brand values and the audience. Anything that is irrelevant should be discarded.
Instead of opting for a black and white approach to designing a logo, make sure to design a hook board. A hook board will help you craft designs with a specific set of elements in mind such as colors, fonts, as well as images. As by looking at the hook board you can get a general idea of the designs that you want to design.
Step 5: Create Digital Logo Designs
Begin by designing the logo in software such as Adobe Illustrator and CorelDRAW. And unlike previous steps, this step requires you to have the short listed designs in mind. Feel free to let your creativity flow as sketches have no limitations. With that in mind, start off with monochrome sketches to sharpen the outline of the logo. From there, you can add color to make the logo pop.
Step 6: Gathering Feedback
Now that you have a few digital designs ready, send them off to stakeholders, or better yet, potential customers so they can give you honest feedback and critiques. Their insights can be extremely valuable to help your ideas flourish.
Step 7: Polish Your Logo Design
Using the feedback, polish your selected design. Colors, typefaces, and layout matter. Make sure your logo is designed flexibly enough for a myriad of uses from business cards to a billboard and everything in between.
Step 8: Finish Your Logo Design
After polishing your logo, finish it by saving your design in various types of files for different needs such as SVG for websites and PNG for a transparent background. Don’t forget to save copies for light and dark cases.
Typical Types Of Logos
The different kinds of logos can be grouped into several categories.
- Wordmarks: This logo is made only of words (e.g. Google).
- Lettermarks: The name of the brand is abbreviated (e.g. IBM).
- Pictorial Marks: The brand is represented by a picture (e.g. Apple).
- Abstract Marks: A brand is relative to geometric shapes (e.g. BP).
- Combination Marks: Text accompanied with symbol (e.g. Adidas).
- Emblems: Logos that are contained in a figure (e.g. Starbucks).
These classifications can guide you in choosing the most appropriate one that portrays your profile best and guide you on how to design a logo that catches the eye of the viewer and gets etched in his/her memory.
Conclusion
Clearly, the artistic creation of the company logo is very fundamental to the overall branding strategy and should be done with thoughtful care. If a methodical approach is adopted which entails starting with a brand analysis followed by refining the design, then the end product will be a logo which serves the business purpose and is liked by a target audience.
In so doing, keep in mind that the goal of Logo Design goes deeper than just the logo looking beautiful; it is to build a bond with your audience using the image.
