As the old saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words.
Your logo is among the most important cornerstones of your brand’s identity. In most cases, it’s the first thing your audience will see—the first impression your business will make upon them. You want to do everything in your power to ensure that impression lasts.
With that in mind, here’s how you can create a memorable logo for your business.
Start With “Why”
First thing’s first, you need to answer a few questions.
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- Why do you feel you need a logo? It may fly in the face of everything you’ve been taught about branding, but not every business needs a logo. For instance, a company that operates entirely online and doesn’t sell any physical products would be better served focusing on the aesthetics of its website first.
- What does your business do? Are you an apparel company? A software developer? A boutique store?
- Where will your logo appear? This may include packaging, documentation, your website, and so on. How you plan to use your logo will play a considerable role in how your final design looks.
Know Your Brand
Your logo is, at its core, a reflection of your brand’s identity. Its purpose is to visually communicate what makes your brand unique—to show prospective customers who you are and give them some idea of what you do. It follows, then, that you cannot design an effective logo if you don’t know your own brand.
But what’s in a brand, exactly?
- Core values
- Personality and language, including your brand’s voice on social media
- Your unique selling points and competitive differentiators
- Slogans and taglines
Consider Your Audience
Although not a direct part of your branding, understanding your business’s target audience and niche is crucial. You need to know what resonates with the people to whom you’re selling. Moreover, you need to understand what they value and why.
Look Everywhere for Inspiration
Maybe you already have some ideas in mind for your logo. Maybe not. If you’re lucky enough to have some creative inspiration already pushing you forward, you can probably skip this step.
Otherwise, let’s talk brainstorming. Often, the best way to come up with new ideas is to look at what other people are doing. To take established creations and think about how you can put your own unique spin on them.
As such, you can look for ideas in any or all of the following places:
- Brainstorming sessions with colleagues
- Free logo designs
- Competitor branding
- Logos from other industries or niches
- Artwork
Let Your Style Shine
Next, come up with a broad concept of how you want your logo to look. Do you want a retro-styled feel that plays on nostalgia, or is modern and minimalist a better fit for your brand? Should your logo look more intricate, or do you want it to be as simple as possible?
Learn Some Graphic Design
Even if you don’t plan to design your own logo, we’d still recommend that you endeavor to understand a few fundamentals of the discipline. That includes general best practices as well as more specific principles such as linework, shapes, color, typography, and spacing. The most important graphic design advice of all, however?
Don’t Be Afraid to Work With a Designer
You may be tempted to think you can design your logo on your own. Maybe you’re right—perhaps you’re either a design professional yourself or simply a talented hobbyist. Either way, it’s essential to understand that professionally-designed logos will always perform better than a logo made by someone with minimal expertise.
The best practices we discussed in the previous step? Professional designers live and breathe them. They are, by and large, the best way to bring your logo ideas to life.
Characteristics of a Good Logo
Once you’ve put your logo together, you have one final question to answer—is it good enough? To know the answer, you must know what characteristics make a logo memorable. These include:
- Simplicity
- Versatility
- Distinctiveness
- Timelessness
- Originality
- Brand-aligned
- Appealing to your target market
As you may have surmised, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel in order to create a memorable logo. Some of the best logos in the world are arrestingly simple—Nike’s iconic checkmark, for instance. The best advice we can give you is to focus on creating something that’s uniquely yours.
And once you have an idea in mind, our award-winning design studio can help you make it a reality.