Designing a logo may seem like an easy task, but there is more to creating a visual identity for a brand than simply placing an image or name in a square. Logo designers have always been in high demand. Why? Well, a logo is what impacts a consumer’s brand perception and buying decisions. It’s basically the first impression of a company. In this article, we discuss How to Detox your Logo – Top 5 Things to Know
Take a look around, and you’ll see that pretty much everything is painted with various brand logos. So, even if you don’t know a certain company, you can still tell what they sell by looking at their brand logo.
If you’re wondering how to detox your logo, then you have come to the right place. We’re about to discuss five essential things to consider for crafting a stellar brand mark. So, without further ado, let’s jump right into it!
Table of Contents
Understand Your Brand
While a logo is just an image, it’s also a concise introduction to a company. When designing a logo, you must remember that it needs to reach a particular audience. Whatever you think you know of the brand, write it down. Try to understand the ideology of the brand. Check different websites online for inspiration. However, make sure to seek inspiration from the designs instead of deeper meaning. Your work should be unique and original and reflect your client’s brand attributes.
It’s important that you’re up-to-date with the latest design trends, but it’s also crucial to understand how to detox a company’s overarching personality. You must understand what the logo you’re working on actually means. Remember, each logo has a history or is filled with a deeper purpose or meaning.
For instance, if you look at Wikipedia’s logo, you’ll notice an imperfect world of puzzle pieces painted with glyphs from various writing systems. Or, Apple’s brand logo, which is missing a bite. While they are simple logos, they both share a twist that represents the brand ideology.
A logo is a company’s visual keystone. Therefore, you must take a robust approach in order to define its personality to gain a satisfying result.
Choose Fonts Carefully
Some designers don’t pay attention to fonts and randomly pick them. Fonts speak a brand’s personality. For instance, the font used for a logo that represents a toy company will probably be a handwritten one since children are the target audience. Therefore, such brands should project themselves as a child-friendly business.
On the other hand, if you’re designing a logo for any music band, choose bold fonts to create a robust personality of the band. What that means is you need to ensure there isn’t a mismatch between your brand’s personality and the font you selected. If the font choice doesn’t reflect your brand, odds are the logo design will give wrong indications to your clients.
Furthermore, consider avoiding the use of gimmicky fonts. Try to use unique fonts whenever possible. Also, there are plenty of free high-quality fonts available on the internet that you can use. Logos like the one Coca-Cola uses are widely known for their special custom fonts.
Use the Right Colors
Colors are essential in defining a brand’s message. If your brand logo uses red as its primary color, for instance, it will give an aggressive, energetic, and passionate vibe to your audience. This also means your brand is rather focusing on a younger audience.
Similarly, if blue is the main color, it could evoke the vibes of togetherness and intelligence. Hence most popular social media channels like Facebook have blue logos. So, if creating a social media page is your goal, consider having blue as the chief color.
You can use bold and bright colors to grab the attention of the viewers. But, as already mentioned, these colors speak about a brand’s personality as all colors evoke certain emotions. This is why many modern logo designers use the science behind colors effectively.
Make Sure It Is Scalable
You can tell an excellent logo design by its scalability. Keep in mind that the logo you design will be featured on several advertisements. Thus, it needs to appear as an attractive logo on every media. So, even when scaled up to higher proportions on billboards, your logo should appear cool.
However, if the logo no longer has its sense of proportion and loses some of the design elements, it’s a failure design. That said if there’s ever a need to print your logo on a smaller surface like a pen, for instance, the details of your logo should still be visible.
Keep it Simple and Flexible
Any logo designer would give you the same advice. Your logo should be interesting, but you don’t want to make it too complicated.
When we talk about simple logos, it indicates there will be the use of one or two fonts, colors, and other elements. People should get the brand message at first glance. However, if you’re using way too many fonts and colors, it will confuse the viewers.
Any simple logo boasts a memorable design. Many international businesses are represented by their brand logos. Nike has this minimalist swoosh logo, Samsung has a one-color logo design, Pepsi uses only two colors in its logo, and as mentioned earlier, Apple literally uses an apple as its brand symbol.
Many companies keep their brand name in the logo. Others use some sort of illustration. Both these logotypes are fully capable of grabbing viewers’ attention. Your logo may boast images and colors, but make sure the audience understands the design. Try not to craft it with a bunch of confusing colors as the design would be outrageous. Take Google’s logo, for instance. It’s arguably one of the simplest logos in the world.
The simplicity of a logo design goes a long way in establishing a brand identity as the consumers can easily remember the company and its business.
Wrapping Up
If you want to design a robust logo, you must ensure that you understand the business inside out. Your logo should be unique but have a simple design that conveys the company’s message clearly. Also, it should be scalable and versatile. And finally, the use of colors and fonts should reflect the brand’s personality.
If you found this article about How to Detox your Logo – Top 5 Things to Know helpful, share your thoughts and suggestions with us in the comments below.
Author Bio
Mary Walton is a professional editor, content strategist and a part of NCSM team. Apart from writing, Mary is passionate about hiking and gaming.