Here’s how to design a simple, effective and memorable logo
Coming up with a logo for your business can be a bit of a headache, but thankfully there are companies and people out there like the team at Big Colour signs and Vehicle Wraps, who specialises in logo design and creation. Having a great logo means that you now have a symbol representing your brand and your brand’s personality to give customers something to latch onto.
Why is a logo necessary?
Visual impact
When we consider that humans learn from visual clues, creating an image that represents your business for customers will be more effective than a string of words put together. The simplest of logos are the easiest to remember and, like Apple and Nike, can become so memorable in their simplicity that no slogan or description is needed.
Brand reach
Everyone loves free gifts and having a great logo on your merchandise is a great way to increase your brand awareness. Having a versatile logo lets you create branded swag to hand out at trade shows, give to potential clients, sell in-store, and even send out as birthday gifts to existing clients.
Brand cohesion
Having brand consistency across all platforms is an important step in developing lasting impressions. Having that definitive representation at the base level also gives you something to build on. Your logo will provide a visual starting point to draw from when working on your company’s graphic design.
Standing out
Certain industries, such as the medical supply industry, use variations of an industry specific symbol such as the red cross. Making your logo stand out from the competition is important and when there’s a lot of businesses competing for the same marking, distinguishing yourself can be challenging.
Public trust
Having a logo can provide advantages, such as recognition, brand messaging and return business, whilst going without comes across as unprofessional, illegitimate, and even untrustworthy. Contacting a professional design and print team, such as Big Colour Signs and Vehicle Wraps, is a great way to ensure a professional, effective brand look.
Logo design process
Your business’ core principles
What personality do you want your business to have? Figuring out the personality of your business establishes a core of basic principles to draw upon when designing aspects to represent the company correctly. Samantha Harrington, founder of Driven Media, explains how design is about personality and how you bring that personality to your consumers. Her company is fun, relatable, and feminine without being girly and they used those core principles to guide the design decisions they made.
The perfect font
Once you’ve figured out your core principles, use that to find the perfect font. Typography not only communicates the name of your company, but, when chosen correctly, helps convey its personality. There are 3 main types of font to choose from and each of them have their own strengths, weaknesses and varieties.
- Serif font – promotes a traditional, professional vibe that can feel outdated on platforms such as websites.
- Sans serif font – minimalist with a sleek appearance that works perfectly when paired with modern web design. The lack of serifs provides a cleaner-looking text and easier readability when it comes to web articles.
- Script font – lots of personality and aimed to resemble handwriting. These fonts can be creative, elegant, or casual in addition to being difficult to read sometimes. This is why they have very limited use in web design and are most often used in titles or logos of sophisticated businesses and their products.
- Display font – decorative and the most diverse group. These fonts vary in appearance so much that unlike the serif and sans serif fonts, there isn’t anything that ties them together. Used only for titles and not body copy, they can go from highly decorated to minimalistic and carry a lot of artistic information about your company and its products.
Colour choices
Choosing colours to represent your company is the next difficult choice, however, if you keep in mind that colours can represent other concepts, such as feelings, things can be a bit easier. Colour meanings change based on their shade and saturation, with lighter softer colours drawing women in while the darker brighter colours attract men.
When using multiple colours in your logo, try to choose ones in similar hues and, if you want an accent colour, choose one that strongly contrasts with your main palette. Pinterest can be a great place to source colour palette ideas, there are also a whole host of free resources online with palettes for specific seasons or moods. Here are some generally accepted colour theory meanings:
- Red – Exciting, bold.
- Orange – Friendly, cheerful, confident.
- Yellow – Optimism, clarity, warmth.
- Green – Peace, health, growth.
- Blue – Trust, dependability, strength, calm.
- Purple – Creative, imaginative, wise, spiritual.
- Black and White – Balanced, neutral, serious.
Simplicity
At big colour, we highly recommend that you keep it simple when it comes to creating your logo. This means you need to take your time to come up with and design your company’s name, logo, and branding. By choosing something simple and recognisable your branding should be able to last for years, especially with a great foundation of standards for how everything will be used by others. Great branding is classic and timeless
Mood boards
If you have employees or a partner, consider including them in the design process. It has been found that when people feel engaged, the brand can come alive as your employees take pride in being a part of the company’s foundation.
A fun way to come up with different logo options is to create a mood board where you can compile all the images, designs, colour combinations, photos, illustrations, and other logos you feel drawn to and feel represent the look and feel you want for your company.
Either a digital or physical board will do, and feel free to have one for each design direction you’re drawn to including short descriptions as to how they represent your brand’s attributes. If you’re having a hard time deciding, present them to members of your team or a decision-maker to help you narrow down your options.
When you need help, contact a professional design company
The team at Big Colour Signs & Vehicle Wraps is here to help you, no matter what step you’re at in designing the logo for your business. Contact us by clicking here to send an online message or send an email to admin@bigcolour.com.au and we will contact you back.
If you’ve got a quick question or wish to speak directly with one of our team members, give us a call on (02) 4969 5700 or visit us in Gateshead – Unit 16/26 Oakdale Rd, Gateshead NSW 2290.