When you think about many of the largest companies in the world, the first thing that comes to mind is usually their logos. This is because modern businesses rely on effective communication with their potential customers, and logos play an essential part in this process. If you are after some top tips on how to create an effective logo, you’ve come to the right place!
A great logo has the power to convert people into loyal customers, sending out a message about your company and the identity you want to create. For example, the Apple logo is straightforward, but it’s also highly memorable, sleek, and minimalist – embodying the company’s design language.
Many small business owners overlook the importance of having a high-quality logo, and they miss out on the massive benefits that having one can bring to a company. In actual fact, many small and medium-sized business brands are recognised within their local area and stand for something in the mind of the community.
Branding and logos are not just marketing for national and multinational companies.
Impact of effective logo design on your business
From the uniform your team wears to your vans and cars, your business cards and stationery and through to your emails and social media profiles – your brand appears everywhere! It’s the common element, or glue if you like, that holds the various parts of your business together in the eyes of a customer. Therefore, it’s really important for business owners to understand what makes a good logo design.
Graphic design is subjective by nature. However, there are a few top tips that we can share about how to design an effective logo, which can be used on social media, business cards, and wherever else your business requires it.
What is easy though to evaluate about a logo design, is the impact of when it goes wrong!
- If you don’t have a logo, it might say you aren’t yet serious to potential customers.
- If it appears amateurish, it might be saying you are cheap or unprofessional.
- If it’s too flippant, it may explain you’re not serious about your work.
- If it’s too serious, it could imply you are rather dull or lack creativity.
- If it’s inconsistently used, it can imply a lack of care and attention to detail, which for many services providers is the last thing you want to be inadvertently telling potential customers!
The cost and energy to redesign and replace a bad logo are both expensive and time-consuming. Time and money that could be better used elsewhere in your business, if only the logo had been right in the first place.
Steps to designing an effective logo
Know your Brand
It’s vital to properly understand your brand and the nature of your business before you create a logo. The aim of a logo is to visually communicate your business’s personality and character, so you need to know what that is first of all.
Once you understand your goals, it will inform your design choices going forward.
For instance, a children’s party events company is unlikely to use a black and white design, opting instead for bright and varying colours. This will also give you ideas about which design elements to use. For example, a construction company may want to use more solid shapes, whereas a florist might end up using more natural shapes.
Of course, these are all simply suggestions, but the general idea is to understand your business in such a way that you can distil its purpose and goals into a visual form.
Research the Competition
During the design process, it’s a great idea to research what your competitors are doing. While this is generally a good tip in business, it also rings true for logo design.
Not only will this help to guide you in the right direction in terms of design elements, but it will also ensure that you don’t end up at the same conclusion as one of your rivals, meaning that your logo is distinctive.
You may be working in a very niche industry and notice that most of your competitors use the same design cues in their logos – perhaps opting for specific shapes or preferring a particular type of font. Doing this research can ensure that your logo stands out from the rest whilst borrowing what works for that particular audience.
This leads us to our next point…
Know Your Audience
It is essential to know who you’re marketing to and in what form.
There are a variety of logo designs that have become long-lasting templates due to their simplicity and functionality.
These include:
- Lettermarks, like H&M or IBM – simplicity at its best
- Wordmarks, like Disney or Coca Cola – presenting the name in an attractive way
- Symbols, like Apple – creating an instantly recognisable link to your brand
- Abstract, like Nike – using shapes to create something timeless.
It’s important to note that even for brands like Apple and Nike, their original logos included the name of the brand, as it’s vital that your customers can recognise the name first and foremost!
How to create an effective logo: don't under estimate the value of professional logo design
Once you’ve got these elements in place, it’s time to put them all together and create your logo. At this stage, you can begin to put your logo together using various typography and shape elements or even design it by hand.
However, we find that many of our clients are looking for something professional that doesn’t require them to spend hours on their own, working on a logo design that might not even be right for them.
A study in 2020 found that 60% of consumers avoid brands that have odd, unattractive, or unappealing logos, regardless of whether they received good reviews, which highlights just how important it is to get your logo right the first time. This is why at Growth by Design, we offer a fully bespoke logo creation service, specifically for small businesses to ensure they have an effective logo design for them.
We have created hundreds of logos for our clients over the years, and our expert designers work with you to produce something that will bring your business to the next level.
Take a look at our creative portfolio for some inspiration and see this process in action.
