The Beginner’s Guide to Logo Design

We live in times when internet startups appear at the speed of light, creating an immense competition. The only way to break through is a truly memorable market strategy. Just look at Coca-Cola’s astonishing history of adds. And what’s in the center of it all? The famous red and white color scheme and cursive font. If you want to imprint your brand into the minds of people like that, it needs to be a fully-formed entity, and your logo is an embodiment of that.

The success of every business depends on the power of visual communication with target customers. A custom logo design will represent your values, get your message across to the consumers, and visually reflect your brand identity. If done right, that is. Designing a logo takes a lot of research and conceptualizing, so it can be hard to figure out where to start, especially if you’ve never done it before. That’s why we’ve decided to break it into steps for you.

Find That Small Difference

Your aim is to design a unique logo, so the first step is to determine what makes your business unique. Even if you’re in a highly competitive field, your business must be different to at least some extent. You need to find that small difference compared with similar enterprises in the market. So go over your business details again - every information can turn out to be an essential one. Pay special attention to your target market and customers. This is the initial step that will lead you towards the right lines, shapes, colors, symbols, and fonts.

Aim For Simplicity

The plethora of available logo elements, as well as the notion that the logo needs to convey all the information about your business, present a dangerous trap. Many designers easily go overboard and end up with a too complicated design that simply doesn’t communicate with the audience. People need to be able to get your message at first glance, so you should aim for simplicity. Apple’s apple with a bite and Nike’s simple swoosh are good examples. Complex use of design elements might seem cool, but people will have to fight their way through them to get some meaning, which they certainly won’t bother to do.

Keep in mind that simplicity is not all about the shapes and symbols. The popular opinion that you need a custom font to reflect your brand personality is a myth. You can waste a lot of time only to end up with letters that are hard to understand and therefore memorize. So simply spell out your business name using a simple, yet eye-catching font.

Create a Realistic Overview

You should always start with sketches of different logo ideas on a piece of paper. Refrain from filling in the colors - they can easily make a bad logo look much better and you need a realistic overview. If your logo doesn’t look right in black & white, then it isn’t right. There are many occasions in which it will be printed without colors - faxed documents, letterheads, newspapers, even some magazines. Choosing the color scheme is the easier part - you’re probably already using some colors on your website that reflects your brand personality, and you can consult the psychology of colors to come up with colors and shades that will complement your design while conveying desired emotions. Just don’t incorporate the color scheme until you’re completely satisfied with the final sketch.

Establish Consistency

You can’t simply create a memorable logo. You can create a unique one, but what turns it into a memorable one is its appearance in a variety of situations. That’s why it’s crucial to tailor it so it can fit that variety instead of going for a one-size-fits-all solution. First of all, you need to consider different size variations - from billboard adds to business accessories. Your design needs to maintain a sense of proportion whether it’s scaled up or reduced to the miniature size when full details of all its features still need to remain visible. Second, it would be wise to create different variations. McDonald’s is a perfect example - in situations where their full name simply can’t fit, they can always rely on their famous golden arches symbol.

Unique nature of your logo already hides in a unique aspect of your business. After you pinpoint that aspect, the key is to present it at simply as you can. Final sketch is not just the sketch, it is the thing - color scheme is just there to complement it. In the end, visual consistency is what makes the logo truly memorable.