How Important a Logo is?
A logo and its design is completely under rated in today’s world and is given least importance by many new or even some working businesses out there. They do not fully understand the important a logo holds to their business. What is a logo by the way? It is a unique design or visual image for immediate recognition, admiration, trust, loyalty and superiority that your business holds in the market. Each company’s logo is different from the other in the market in terms of colours, shapes, fonts and images and is characteristic of their brand and marketing strategy.
Looking at all these important aspects associated with a mere logo it makes one wonder how some people cope with a cheap logo design or not even bother to get one! In this article you will read out the ways that you can follow to get a powerful logo.
Know Your Audience
This is the first step to design a logo. Whose attention you want to grab with your logo? Children’s? Women’s? Men’s? Does your business represent the global market or the local one? Is it age specific? All these questions will help you in deciding over many features that your prospective logo will have, such as colours, fonts, design etc.
Research your audience, their likes, dislikes and only then start brainstorming on the logo design. For example you may definitely not want to put a sparkling effect on your logo if it targets tough audience. Similarly, a company whose target audience is children will never go for tough designs.
Visual Double Meaning
Some of the very famous and successful logos in the world use this technique and it works, every time. It actually means joining two pictures or ideas joined together to make one amazing and genius one that interprets the clever concept behind. Try looking for inspirations in what you do, after some brainstorming you might come up with some visual treats that will accommodate multiple ideas in one picture for you. The Spartan Golf Club example below is perfect to explain this point.
You can clearly see two pictures embedded as one here, a person with a golf stick and a Spartan man. Isn’t it pure genius?
Colour is Essentially Important
With very few examples, some of the best logos in the world use three or even less colours. Such as Apple, there is only one black Apple image with a bite (that itself is a genius idea if you think about it) or Coca-Cola for instance which uses only two colours. Therefore try not to make your logo a child’s colouring book otherwise it will be difficult for your logo to look good even in greyscale. Sticking to three colours or less is the best option to make the logo clear, simple, standout and easily recognizable to the audience. Always consider the carious possibilities of using your logo and whether your version of it will look good under every circumstance or not.
Don’t Copy Successful Logos
It might be easy and tempting to create something out of what you like or what already exists but mind you, it will not make your logo unique, people will immediately recognize your plagiarism source (if you copy from known brands) and this could result in a complete disaster for you as it will convey the message of you being lazy, inspired and fervent about what you do. Look at your competitors’ logos; ask yourself what makes them stand out, what you can do to make yours better than theirs. To make things better, sketch. Take out your paper pad and pencil and sketch out your ideas. You will eventually come up with something.
Keep it Simple
Being a designer does not mean you have to be an awesome illustrator and go over-the-board in designing a logo. Even if you are not a professional designer, do not crowd things up; keep your logo as simple as possible and try giving a unique edge to it that could give your logo great recognition. Simple icons in the business industry have always proven to stand out the test of time and have become some of the most powerful logos in the world today such as Apple, the image of an apple is boring but it is that bite mark which takes it to the next level (computers and bytes, if you are getting what I mean).
Room for Improvement
Logos evolve, they always do. You too can work on your current logo to make it less boring or may even work on how your logo would look after 5 or 10 years from now.