Five Do’s and Don’ts of Making a Logo

Logo design – Your logo represents your business, make sure you love it

A logo represents a business through the choice of colour scheme, an image of the company’s good or service, or simply an emotion that inspires in the audience.

A businesses logo doesn’t have to specifically mean anything; your business could give the logo a meaning by making it your own. Many major businesses in today’s market have done just that; this includes iconic brands like Apple and Nike, just to cite a couple. Use your imagination when thinking of a logo. Simply thinking of your target audience and what would be able to represent your business can inspire ideas for potential logo designs.

Remember, a logo is an expression of the business’s brand. A logo acts as a gateway from customers to a business, as it can trigger ‘memories’ about the business based on previous interactions and associations. This could include sports team jersey, advertisement, posters, celebrity endorsements, charitable efforts.

Give It Time.

While companies invest money on designing a logo, they sometimes forget the link with what their brand stands for and it might happen that after a year or so they realise that the logo no longer offers a true representation of their brand.

The goal is to make a timeless logo. This does not mean that a logo cannot or should not evolve or change, but re-branding should be taken as a serious business project and approached with care, as to avoid flops like the new Weight Watcher logo.

Three methods that can help you and your business come up with the right ideas for a logo or improve your current logo include:

• Brainstorm: Come up with potential ideas, no matter how raw the concept.
• Brand Mood Board – A.K.A. a board with a collection of ideas on it. By being inspired by the quantity of images and fresh Ideas, it’s no surprise that a business could find something which they believe would sit well as their logo.
• Crowd Sourcing – A.K.A gathering information from the public to get feedback or constructive criticism. Crowd Sourcing can be a good method to use in order to find out what the public thinks of a group of potential logos or just one logo, before the official launch.
  Design Shack gives us 3 key suggestions in order to make your logo stand out:
• Use a visual double entendre. A double entendre is something which is open to two interpretations, like LG’s logo
• Good colour palette. A good logo would use colours that work together and look aesthetically pleasing.
• Having a story being tied to your business. Strive to develop a logo that “ties into the company’s core values and mission”.
  There is nothing wrong with keeping it simple

When it comes to picking and finding out what colour scheme works for the business logo, selecting the images, or writing the words that it should contains, only using a few colours and items will make it easier to remember. Many of the major brands such as Apple, Nike, Chanel and Mercedes only use one colour. The objective of a logo is to inspire thoughts of the business and to be memorable, don’t over complicate matters.

Size and Resolution of a logo

The size of the logo depends on the platform you want to upload it to. As Inkbot Design explains, you should be able to print your logo in any size without image degradation, be it postage-stamp sized or big enough to put on the side of a building. Being able to downscale or enlarge the size of the logo, allows the business to put the logo in any setting without the logo losing its quality.

Don’t cut corners with the logo

Don’t cut corners by using clip art or cheap online solutions. Going the extra mile just to make a small change, could make the difference in making your business standing out from others. Hiring a professional designer to create a logo would further increase the opportunity for your business to look different. Researching whether your logo is like other businesses is also recommended, as it could enable you to avoid possible plagiarism allegations. Publicly testing your logo prior to the launch of the business can yield further results on whether the logo is good or bad as well as providing information on what needs to be changed or kept.

The Author

Sterling Chijioke Obiaraeri is a second-year student business management at Kingston University. As part of the Consultancy in Practice module, Sterling is leading a team of bloggers discovering the world of branding and marketing.

Sterling describes himself as ‘anti-social, friendly and driven’ and he enjoys spending most of his time reading books, playing games, listening to music and exercising.

This is Sterling’s very first article.