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How to design a logo
Stats show that a brand gets up to a whopping 90% of its first impressions from its logo design.
So, is your logo leaving the impression you want it to?
As the graphic designer at SLT Media for nearly 10 years, I’ve seen close to a million logos and encountered even more questions about them (I might be exaggerating a bit, but there have indeed been a lot). The most common problem I find is that clients want their logos to look good to them (and I can’t fault them for that, I would want my logo to look good to me too) but they can often forget they have a target audience – which leads me to my first point (and rule).
- Target Audience
When you’re working on your logo, or working with a graphic designer to create your logo, you have to take a look at your target audience most importantly. You’ll find as the business owner, you might not even be the target audience. In this case, you’ll have to either do your research or trust your graphic designer that they know what your target audience looks for. (I will quickly add here that choosing a good graphic designer to create your logo rather than doing it on your own will save you a lot of time, they have all the research in their pinky finger)
To put the importance of the target audience into perspective, imagine you have a company that sells alcohol, your target audience naturally is anyone over the age of 18. Maybe depending on the type of alcohol, you’d want to think about a more narrow target. For example, most commonly you’ll find women might drink gin, and men might drink whiskey (there are of course exceptions to the rule, there always will be). You want to appeal to a mature audience, use more mature colours and fonts. You might also think about using bolder fonts and colours for a target audience that’s mostly male, to help them feel more masculine, just like you might want to use softer fonts and tones for a target audience that’s mostly women. (Again there are exceptions to the rules, but we’re looking at the bigger picture, we want to appeal to most rather than the exceptions. Sorry, it’s business!).
The more luxurious you make your brand look in this situation the more people would be inclined to spend as they would see that they’re getting a luxurious product. Now close your eyes and imagine what colours a luxury brand might use?
…
Am I correct in guessing you thought of black or white and gold or silver? This is where another rule comes in. Colours!
- Colours
Colours are so important when it comes to your brand. Colours will help customers identify your brand. But also, colours help to establish emotions.
For example, the colour red, most commonly is used to catch attention, to give a warning/alert. It creates a sense of urgency. A ‘sale’ sign is most commonly seen in red, because brands and companies want you to hurry and buy the products. They want to catch your attention and give you that sense of urgency that if you don’t buy now the sale will be over and you’ll miss out. And no one likes to feel left out.
Blue is often found to be a comforting and relaxing colour. Office-based businesses are often found using blue, as a sort of ‘We’ve got you, we have your problems under control, you can relax.’
Yellow is often used by restaurants and fast food places. The biggest example being McDonalds. Yellow is seen as a hunger-inducing colour, therefore you’ll find a lot of food companies using this trick to get their customers to buy more food.
Green is often seen in companies that are actively trying to bring awareness to the environment or health. Green is also seen as a relaxing colour similar to blue.
Colours are important for your brand because over the years you might rebrand, change the style to fit trends, but your colours will often stay the same. You might change shades, but the standard root colours will often stay the same if chosen wisely at the beginning.
I could go on forever about colours but this post is only so long. So I will leave you with those main 4 colours. If you want to learn more about what colours mean I found a link that could help you learn a little more. Or you can come ask us for advice!
- You need more than just one logo
Over and over again I will come across brands who create one logo and stick with it like if they change a single thing about it no one will recognise them. WRONG! I mean, they’re not completely wrong. But it’s also not ideal.
For best use of your logo you want a few versions of your logo.
- Full main logo
- Logo without a slogan (if your main logo doesn’t have a slogan you can skip this one)
- A horizontal logo (if your main logo is already horizontal you can skip this one)
- A simplified version. Just an icon or a letter.
Now the mind blowing part! You CAN also change the colours of your logo! But hold on, not like that. What I mean is, if you have a dark logo, and you want to use it on a dark background, don’t be afraid to make the logo or the dark parts of the logo white, or a colour that fits your brand that will help your logo stay visible.
Here’s an example using our own logo.
As long as you’re following your brand colours, change your logo, adapt it to your content. Help your logo pop out. Trust me, people will still know it’s your brand. They won’t suddenly stop recognising your logo.
Why do I need so many logos? You may ask – and you probably did.
We’re using our imagination again. Imagine your logo has an icon, it has a long name, it has a slogan. Cool! Imagine that logo on a big banner. Sounds fine, no problem. You’re right. Now imagine that same logo on a pen. Will you be able to read the slogan? Most likely not. Probably looks unprofessional too, like it wasn’t thought out. Like it was a rushed decision. What if you just used the icon of your logo? You can still recognise the brand. Your icon is shown on every other bit of marketing material as part of your logo already, so anyone who’s seen your logo before will recognise the icon on the pen.
In conclusion
There are hundreds of more rules that aren’t really rules. But these are my main three that I like to follow. Also the only ones that fit in this post.
My conclusion is: find a good graphic designer. Trust them. When they advise against something it’s because they’ve done the research. They know what works. They want your brand to look good as much as you do. It’s 90% of first impressions after all.
