Logos are a central component of all good business marketing. They can be used on all marketing materials, including a business’s website, social media, email, letterhead, business cards, products, buildings and more. Wherever they’re placed, they immediately clue the target audience to the business, showing its presence and its essence.
A good business logo should be distinct, relevant, memorable, timeless and versatile. If you need a logo for your new business or for rebranding, here are seven vital tips to follow when designing one.
1. Don’t Be Too Cheap
Regardless of how extensive or limited your business’s marketing budget is, the logo isn’t a component that you want to cut corners on. It’ll be used on all marketing collateral, used for as long as your business is in operation, and will be the most recognizable emblem of your business.
In other words, you’re going to be stuck with your logo for a long time. It’ll be the central marketing component for the duration of your business, unless you go through a complete rebranding at some time.
Since your logo will remain your business’s emblem indefinitely, you need one that is high quality. You don’t want a logo that looks cheap now, especially not when your business has grown and is highly successful.
Be prepared to pay for a quality logo. You’re going to need to spend something, and it’ll likely be more than $15 or $20. A logo generator can generally create high-quality and customizable logos for around $50 to $150. That’s one of the best ways you can spend an extra $50 or so.
For some perspective, consider how else you might spend $50 on your business. A box of business cards will eventually be completely handed out, and a storefront sign will look worn in a few years. Even the space that your business has could change in a few years.
A logo is one of the few assets that your business will retain indefinitely, and likely throughout the entire course of the business. Investing a nominal amount in a logo is a wise marketing decision.
2. Get a Vector File
One technical aspect of attaining a high-quality logo is the file type that you have the logo in.
The most basic logos that are free or cheap often come as PNG files. Some moderately priced packages might also include JPEG, PDF or similar file types, which are somewhat better but still not the best. Each of these file types may not meet all of your business’s needs in the future, however.
The specific issue with PNG, JPEG, PDF and similar file types is resizing. While you can enlarge graphics in these formats to an extent, there’s a limit to how big you can make them and still have a clear image.
An SVG vector file is different because of its vector method. Vectors use mathematical formulas that make it possible to enlarge an image without having it become blurry. If you have an SVG file of your business’s logo, you can make it as big as you want and still retain perfect clarity.
Being able to enlarge your logo is important if you ever use it on a large storefront sign, major presentation slideshow, event booth or poster, or anywhere else that you might want to showcase your business to a wide audience.
Expect to pay a little more for an SVG file, but the added cost is worth spending to have virtually unlimited future use.
3. Keep It Simple
Keep the overall design of your logo as simple as possible. Sometimes new (and experienced) business owners are tempted to fill the logo with information or different graphic features. Too much is counterproductive to a logo’s purpose, however.
Your business’s logo should convey something relevant to your business, and the ideal logo would capture the central essence of your business in some way. It’s not going to convey everything that you may want to tell someone about the business, though, and this is only a secondary purpose. A small emblem can only say so much.
The purpose of your business’s logo isn’t to convey lots of information. Its primary purpose instead is simply to alert potential customers/clients of your business’s presence. That’s why it’s placed on websites, social media accounts, digital communications, print communications, advertisements, signs and the like. Customers need to know your business is there.
A simple logo can announce your business’s presence and convey a basic aspect of your business. There’s no need for complicated and complex features that do too much. Its purpose is simple, and customers will only glance at the logo for a brief time. Its design should likewise be simple.
If you’re struggling to simplify your business’s logo, consider these actionable items:
4. Choose an Appropriate Color Palette
Logos usually shouldn’t have any more than three colors, and fewer often work just as well. The colors used should both work together, and be appropriate for your type of business.
Complimentary colors on the color wheel usually work well together, although you can alternatively use two or three shades of the same color. The colors are combined with black and white in most cases, but an all-color logo can make a bold statement.
Look at competitors’ logos to get a sense of what general palette is most often used for your industry. For example, an online business might want strong and bold colors to stand out in advertisements. A flower shop might prefer pastels that reflect the color of flowers, and a coffee shop could do well with neutral tones like coffee beans are.
If you’re not sure which colors work well together, there are color palette tools that will generate a good combination for you.
5. Find a Different Feature
While your logo might have a similar color palette to competitors’, your business’s logo must stand out in order to be effective. It has to be different, or else will be lost among the many advertisements that customers/clients see.
Depending on the design of your logo and the ethos of your business, there are a few ways to make your logo distinct with a different feature:
6. Design for Where Your Logo Will Be Used
Your logo will be ubiquitous throughout all marketing materials, and it should be flexible for future use. Keep the primary locations that the logo will be used in mind, though.
The logo ought to be especially well-suited for the primary places that it’ll be used. A logo on a website would be different from one on a coffee cup, and one that’s on a sign people drive by will be different from one that’s on letterhead. After you create a potential logo, think specifically about how it’d look wherever it’ll be.
7. Test Your Logo With Clients/Customers
Sometimes an artist’s message isn’t accurately conveyed to viewers, and the same can happen with a logo. What you see in a logo won’t necessarily be what others see.
To ensure your logo does convey what you want to communicate, test the logo out on other people. Ask friends and family what they think of the logo, and eventually broaden that to people who are akin to your target audience of customers/clients.
For the most effective tests, show people a few different logo options that you’ve developed. Ask them for their favorite and least favorite. Also ask them what they think each logo conveys and how each one makes them feel.
Many online logo makers allow you to create mockups without paying. You can test out several mockups, and then only pay for the one that testing shows to be most effective.
Create a Quality Logo That’ll Be Effective
There are infinite potential designs for logos, and these tips will help you create a great one for your business. Get started now, and see what designs you come up with.