7 Tips for Designing Your Brand’s Logo

A custom-designed logo can do wonders for your business and your brand building efforts. Your logo is the foremost visual representation of your business, so great attention to detail is necessary. With a bit of research and understanding of effective graphic design principles, you can design an iconic logo that expands your brand’s reach. 

Use these seven tips to design a winning logo for your brand:

Get Inspired

One of the toughest parts of the logo design process is knowing where to start. It would be best to start with brainstorming to let all ideas out and write them down. Remember that inspiration can come from anywhere, and you need to explore different ideas and places where you can observe plenty of varying logo designs.

Here are some consideration to kickstart your creativity:

• Research competitor brands to see industry-specific design trends.
• Write down the emotions you want your brand to portray.
• Learn which colors are associated with these feelings.
• Focus on fonts that match your brand tone.
• Think of how you will incorporate your logo onto your packaging and other products.

Review Brand Guidelines

Before you set out to start designing your brand logo, make sure that you have reviewed your brand guidelines. You need to keep in mind that your logo must resonate with your target market. With this in mind, research industry-specific brands that perform well with your audience. What are these brand’s design strategies? It’s important not to duplicate what people are already doing. Instead, focus on what your brand does differently and portray that through visual design. 

Begin by writing down what your brand, business, and market are all about. You also need to know what your brand ideology and personality are regarding the tone it wants to project amid its market and audience. Gathering this information will help you to create your perfect logo design.

Colors Are Key

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Color is a critical part of your overall design strategy, so it is a major consideration for your logo creation too. There is a science behind color choices, which graphic designers effectively use in their logo designs. For instance, using red as the main color in your logo means you wish to send out the message of your brand being passionate, energetic and aggressive, mainly targeting the younger audience.

Similarly, if you are going with bright and bold colors, you’re trying to grab people’s attention, whereas blue color mainly evokes feelings of serenity. Whichever colors you decide to choose, remember that each one produces a certain emotion. Therefore, it’s important to select colors that support the emotions you want your brand to represent. 

Designing Like A Pro

Once you have a clear idea of your overall brand identity and feel inspired, it’s time to start translating that to the design. Think about details such as fonts, shapes, graphics, and typography. Here are some graphic design principles to carry into your logo creation:

• Opt for a logo graphic that represents your brand’s purpose.
• Use shapes like circles and squares to create clean and interesting broders.
• Choose color contrast to highlight key information.
• Negative space has a positive impact on readability.

If you aren’t sure how to tie these design principles into your logo, you can hire a designer to bring your vision to life. 

Vectors Are Better

Vector graphics employ mathematics to ensure perfect reproduction across mediums. Due to this, each line, path, or curve in vectors looks neat and precise on business cards or banners alike. It is better to make design elements with vectors to retain a crisp quality at various dimensions. Even if you wish to change the logo’s color or rearrange the logo components, vector logos are easily editable using vector-based programs such as Adobe Illustrator.

File Formatting

Once the logo is finalized, an important consideration for designers is to offer a logo in various formats so that it can be used anywhere. Knowing which file formats to use is crucial here because a brand’s logo generally exists in all sorts of contexts. This includes websites, pop up displays, marketing material, business cards, step and repeats, and more.

There are several different types of file formats here which can be used including:

• AI
• EPS
• SVG
• PDF
• JPG
• PNG

Taking Your Logo On The Go

Once you have designed a logo you like, it means you’re one step closer to making your brand visible. It’s the most important part of your overall visual identity, and using it for various promotional efforts will help you gain wider recognition among your target segment.

Designing your brand’s logo requires research, attention to detail, and some basic graphic design knowledge. The key here is to know your brand and know how to use design principles to produce a log that is authentic to your narrative and will resonate with consumers.