Logo designing can be overwhelming. However, if you think it is a simple task, you need to think again. There is much more in creating a perfect logo than just placing your company’s name in shape and bringing it to fruition. From competitive research process, selecting the perfect color, the font size and styles to shapes and images, there is a lot to think about when designing a logo.
Logo designers are in high demand for the increasing demand for logo designs needed to make a brand identity. A logo design is the face of the company and has the strength to make the right first impression on the customers. It is capable of changing the brand perception of the client as well as the purchase result and overall attitude towards the brand.
A logo design of a company can make or break the business. A perfectly designed logo is capable of communicating the message of your company to the audience creating an excellent reputation for your brand. Businesses are dependent on effective communication with their customers. Marketers have to make sure that people can engage with the company in a number of ways. A logo being the face of the company becomes the visual tool to engage the potential customers and interact with them.
A perfectly made logo design has the potential to convert the audience into loyal clientele. In simple words, logo design can serve many different purposes for industries and businesses.
Here are 12 tips that can help a designer to bring creativity in logo designs.
- Use A Visual Double Comprendre
Some of the most recognized logos of all time use this technique to make their logo memorable. It is called a visual double comprendre because of the logos hidden meaning in the image. It is a combination of two pictures combined in a way that it gives two concepts at the same time.
The logo of Spartan golf club is a perfect example of the visual double comprendre. It has a facial image of a Spartan soldier, and the face is depicting a man holding a golf club. It is pure genius to use two images in a single logo. A visual double comprendre is capable of communicating two concepts with the help of a single logo design. The audience appreciates the little mind game that you’re playing and is more inclined to value the design because of it.
2. Keep In Mind The Color Psychology
Usage of colors in logo designing is of key importance. Colors carry meaning and enable a logo to communicate ideas. The colors grab your attention and breathe life to the visual illustration of the concept. That being said, it is crucial that you are knowledgeable about the color psychology and use it to make a perfect logo.
Consider the logo designs of a fast food restaurant. Almost all fast food logos uses red and yellow in their logo designs, and there is a good reason behind it. It is because of the shift in the mood that the color emits which is perfect for their targeted market. Red triggers stimulation, appetite, hunger and attracts attention where yellow emits the feeling of friendliness and happiness.
Before starting to design a logo, you must understand what is it that the company logo is going to represent and whether or not it requires different versions of the logo.
3. Know The Brand And The Targeted Customer
It is important for a designer to have an insight into the client’s brand and their target audience. Research about the business and ask your client the right questions that can help you to make a masterpiece. You need to know the nature of the business, their products, services, history, the audience they are addressing, the customer’s expectation from the products and the services offered to them.
4. Keep It Simple
It doesn’t matter what style or design pattern you choose for your logo design, the essence of your logo must remain pure. Making a creative logo is a test for your presentation skills and brilliance, so it makes sense to follow the “K.I.S.S. (keep it simple stupid) rule” of professional designers and focus on the essence of the company. Keeping it simple enriches the design with creativity with having a timeless appeal while simplifying the overall design.
The apple logo or Mercedes logo is the perfect example of simple and timeless logos. They have very fewer changes since the beginning of the brand and is recognized from a distance. Therefore the core of the logo is that even if you are not able to create a masterpiece, it should be able to represent the brand irrespective of its name and the catchy slogan.
5. Avoid Using Clichés
Every year there are new trend and styles of logo designs that are followed by many designers making the trend or style a cliché. It like using the same idea over and over again for different brands losing the essence of the logo design. The style, as a result, gets old fast and the company loses its recognition to its competition.
Being a designer, it is important that you come up with something unique rather than ripping off what everyone else is doing. Be sure that you are not guilty of using uninspired or cliché logo designs.
6. Make It Own-able
By “ownable” it means something that can be owned. It is a word quite vividly use by marketers, but the concept is linked to the previous tip. Instead of following the herd moving on the same path, think about making your way to the top and strive to create something uniquely recognizable.
Think about whether or not your logo is generic or unique? Always remember that your very first idea is a generic one as everybody’s first idea is. It would be helpful if you fill your notebook or sketchbook with different logo designs until you come up with something unique to move forward.
7. Make It A Custom Type
While being on the page of being unique, a custom type can give you a unique and customized logo. Consider Coca-Cola’s logo for example. Its logo is a custom type logo. Many companies and businesses have tried to have a logo similar to it, but they have always failed to make it look as unique as the logo of Coca-Cola.
When a company hires a designer to design their logo, they expect it to be something exceptional and using a custom type logo ensures that it stays that way. Others will always try to rip off your hard work as a designer but it always difficult to imitate the original custom hand-drawn type logo.
8. Make It Perfectly Proportioned And Symmetrical
Some designers don’t really think about symmetry and proportion when designing a logo. Every image has its weight for which balance is important. It creates balance in the image and gives a pleasing image.
Consider twitter and apple logo for example. The wings, the beak and the body of the bird and the apple bite of the logo are balanced making it a pleasing image to be seen.
9. Take Negative Spaces Under Consideration
Like using double comprendre is a clever way to convey different concepts in a single image, negative space utilizes empty spaces between the images to communicate a hidden message to the audience. It is a clever way used by many designers to make a unique logo for the business.
Think about the FedEx logo for instance. The designer has used the standard type logo which has a hidden arrow in between the letters E and X. the negative spaces logo is so refined and comes with an element of surprise.
10. Adding A Sense Of Motion In The Design
One of the most exciting facts about designing a logo design is the concept of action in an image. This is not always added in every logo like that of apple, but sometimes it can help the company leap to its success.
Consider the different logos of Twitter. In the early stage, it used a bluebird, sitting alight to taking flight. In the most recent designs, the designers took the flight a little further to moving up in the air rather than moving in the same trajectory. The sense of motion is of far more important when designing a mascot logo, like that of games.
11. Make It Versatile
As mentioned in the tips above, a good logo is the one which is timeless and can be used for many different purposes. Where colors enhance the appeal of the logos, versatility makes it available for it to appear on many different platforms apart from social media. It has to look extraordinary, on business cards, letterheads, banners, business website, and brochures. Therefore, it is highly suggested that you understand how it looks in different colors and also in greyscale.
12. Know What It Means
It is not deniable that every good logo has a story to tell. Far beyond being just a simple sketch, it has both obvious and hidden meaning in the image. As discussed many times in the examples above, like FedEx’s arrow depicting the delivery services, Apple’s missing “byte” and the twitter bird’s trajectory.
It is surprising how much time a designer put into a single design to make it able to communicate with the customers. Your customers will always want something unique and extraordinary from you, but if you provide them with a logo that has the client’s business’ core values attached to it, they’ll appreciate you for it.
A company design should have its core values in the logo that could express the brand’s message and personality. It should be able simple and an image of the company.