Your business's logo makes the first impression on your potential customers and has the power to make people remember your brand. Needless to say, logo design is important, regardless of your business or marketing plan. Whether you are starting a new business, getting a website for the first time, or want to give your business a facelift, a new logo can be the ticket to a whole new look for your business.
Logo Design is an Investment into Your Business
Most businesses find that the cost of creating a good logo is more than made up by the marketing opportunity and brand-building that logos create. Even Forbes emphasizes the importance of a quality logo.
If the price of having a designer create a logo for you and integrate it into your marketing material and website is making you have second thoughts about the whole project, here are some of the reasons why it is worth making this investment into your business.
- Memorability. Perhaps the most important aspect of a logo is its power to make your customers recognize your business and brand. Recognizing a brand makes it more likely that a customer will develop loyalty to your product or service.
- Professionalism. Real businesses have logos. Even if you have been doing just fine as a brick-and-mortar business for some time without a logo, if you are trying to extend your marketing or go online, a logo is essential to convince people who don't know you that you are a professional business.
- Set Yourself Apart. A good logo can set you apart from your competition and help your business to stick in people's minds. If you have lots of competition with businesses that have similar products or services to your own, a logo can help customers to remember and seek out your business instead of your competition and it will prevent anyone from thinking that another business is yours.
Tips for Logo Design
Are you interested in making your logo yourself? Even if you intend to work with a designer to polish your logo and incorporate it into your pamphlets, brochures, business cards, and website, you may want to do a lot of the legwork for designing your own logo yourself, especially if you have an artistic side. Some logos are much more effective than others. Here are some tips for building the perfect logo yourself.
Sketch first. The first thing that you draw should not end up being your logo. Create lots of sketches to brainstorm what you want your final logo to look like. It is up to you whether you want to sketch out your logo on pen and paper or use an illustration program on your computer. You should create at least 20 or 30 sketches before you start to finalize your logo design. These sketches will also help your future designer to get a sense of what you are going for in a logo.
Remember balance. Do you remember the rule of 2/3 from your art or photography classes? Logo design also requires balance. Graphics, sizes, and colors should be more or less equal on both sides of the logo. Remember that the logo will be an object suspended in space, so leaving empty space around it will not have the desired effect like when creating art. Rather, fill out the space that you have for your logo thoroughly and keep things balanced.
Use color. Black and white logos can work great, but it is easier to create a striking logo if you use color. Furthermore, color can help represent your brand and be utilized throughout your marketing material. Follow the basic rules of the color wheel like using colors close to each other on the wheel in order to create an overall warm or cool palette that will look good. Keep in mind that your logo won't always be printed in color. Make sure that it still looks great and makes sense when it is printed in black and white or in grayscale.
Make sure that it works on multiple sizes. Sometimes your logo will be tiny, such as on business cards, small promotional items, or envelopes. Other times it may be blown up huge for billboards or posters. You need to make sure that the logo that you create can scale and still look good at various sizes. The best way to do this is to actually make the logo that you are considering smaller and bigger and get a sense of how it looks.
Font matters. The font that you use will determine how legible your logo is and what tone it has, whether playful, serious, or elegant. The font that you use in your logo should also be incorporated throughout the design of your marketing material, so you need to be sure that this is a font that works for multiple uses. Avoid the most common fonts, like Comic Sans or Times New Roman, since they may end up making your logo look less professional and will make it more difficult for the font to help portray your brand. Whatever font you use, make sure that it is clearly legible even when very small. It is best to only choose one font for your logo, as multiple fonts may look busy and messy.
Be sure that it is unique and discernible. Have other people check your logo to make sure that it looks unique and memorable and does not recall any other logos. The goal is for the sight of your logo to immediately bring your brand to mind. The most recognizable brands are simple and distinct, like Nike or McDonalds. Be sure that your logo is clearly recognizable from multiple angles. A good test is to invert it or look at it in a mirror and see if it is still recognizable.
Make sure it makes sense. As you get creative in designing your logo, be careful that you do not go too far from your brand's purpose. The relationship between the logo and your company may seem fun and clear to you, but customers may miss the point. To be sure that your logo is clearly communicating your brand, ask other people to look at it and see if it makes sense.
Be simple. The deeper you go into lots of effects like drop shadows, bubbly effects, gradients, etc, the more complicated your logo will be and the less likely it will be to be easily recognizable. There's nothing wrong with using programs like Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop, but be careful not to get carried away with effects.
Integrating Your Logo into Your Business
Once you have a logo, what should you do to integrate it into your business? You can use your logo on practically everything throughout your business marketing, both physical and online. Here are a few places to make sure you utilize your new custom logo design.
- Online. Your website should have a place for you to put the logo so that it will appear in the address bar and in a designated place on your homepage.
- In your email signature. Put the logo next to your name in an attractive way for your email signature.
- On business cards. The logo should be very clear on your business card. You may want to make it bigger than you expect in order to make it memorable.
- On marketing material. Regardless of what kind of pamphlet, handout, or poster you are creating, your logo should be there. Remember to scale the logo up for larger printed objects.
- On free giveaways. Free giveaways are a great way to encourage brand loyalty, help people to remember your brand, and make it more likely that customers will come back to you. Your logo is essential on every free giveaway object so that your customers will remember who gave them the object.
- On signs and announcements. Wherever your business name appears, the logo should be there as well. If you are putting an ad in local newspapers or magazines or if you are putting out announcements on social media, the logo should be there.
Working with Your Designer
If you don't have a particularly artistic mind or if you have created a rough draft of a logo and you want it to be more polished and professional, you will need a designer. Logo designers are generally visual artists who focus on graphic design. The more information that you give your designer at the beginning, the better. Share not only your final draft of your logo sketch but all of the drafts it took to get there so that you were designer can follow your thoughts and determine what exactly it is that you want from your logo.
At the point that you are using a designer, you might as well make the most of it. Ask your designer if you can get reduced rates for not only the logo design but incorporating the logo, font, and color into all of your marketing material for a unified brand appearance. Remember, a large portion of why you want a logo is in order to build recognizability with your audience. The more distinct your color, font, logo, and other design choices, the more likely your customers will be to remember you and seek out your services again.
Custom Logo Design For Your Business
If you are ready to take the next step in designing a custom logo for your business, it is best to seek out a designer to help you make your vision a reality. This is also a great time to look over other aspects of your marketing and website, such as optimizing for search engines. If you want a logo design company that can help you with your logo and brand design and colors as well as optimize your website for search engines, call Perfectly Optimized today.
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