Logo Design – Basic & Principles
Your logo design is extremely important for conducting a business in the competitive world. Your business have to confront a lot of established as well as new enterprises in your given niche. While a sound marketing plan is essential, your visual communication skills are equally important for your business. With the help of the visuals like logos, business card and other graphic designs etc. businesses can make an instant connect with the audience.
Do not forget that running a business is not easy in this highly competitive world of today. According to the reports, 80% of small businesses close down in the first year of their operation. Rest of them fade away from the market in two to three years. Only a few of them are able to stay firm in their niche markets.
Keep The Design Simple
One of the basic requirements and qualities of a great logo design is that it has to be made on a simple concept. The best logos are the ones that give the viewer an immediate and clear sense of “you” – and are clean and uncluttered. In general, less is more and simplicity is more impactful. Remember that logos are used in a variety of ways, on different platforms and in various formats and sizes, so intricate details will be lost.
A strong logo will have few elements, each of which can be identified easily and are integral to what you’re hoping to communicate. If you have elements that don’t contribute to the whole, get rid of them. So, the first and foremost principle is to avoid complexity and keep the logo design as simple as it can be. The designer must ensure that the audience can understand the business message a company wants to convey through a logo design.
A complex logo with many colors, fonts, and decorative elements can be a huge distraction for the viewers. A simple design does not requires any explanation from the experts and even common viewers can instantly know the message that logo wants to convey.
Use Colors Strategically
Make sure that your logo design is attractive. A clever use of colors can make it look unique. Colors have this amazing ability of evoking our feelings. For example, when we see red, we have some emotions of aggressiveness, love, energy, and passion.
This means that if your business deals in products or services and target customers are from young generation, use red in your logo. Blue is associated with intelligence and friendliness and hence it finds place in social networking sites such as Facebook, Linkedin. Pink symbolizes tenderness and is used usually with anything that is related to women products such as clothes or shoes.
Similarly, yellow is considered as a color of hope and freshness, and green is the color for nature, freshness, and health.
Therefore, incorporate the colors that can express the feelings that you want to evoke. These very feelings or emotions will be the message that you want to deliver to your target customers through your logo design.
Make It Scalable And Versatile
Your business will use the logo on a varied surfaces. These surfaces may be as little as a stamp or a promotional product like a pen. If your details of your logo are not visible clearly when printed on a small space, then redesign the logo.
You may be having a complicated logo design. It would be advisable to remove any undesirable elements. If there are many colors and lines, or typefaces, remove any additional elements.
Similarly, if your logo appears on a big surface of a billboard, as part of your billboard design, then the logo should not lose its sense of proportion. This means that the logo should not be stretch on one side.
To make the logo design scalable, draw it with the help of design grids. This method works well to maintain a good balance amongst various elements of the logo.
Your logo will be used in a number of ways and in multiple contexts.
Here are just a few:
- On designing t-shirts, baseball caps and, alas, fanny packs
- On pens, keychains and water bottles
- On very horizontal and extremely vertical banners
- On both black and white backgrounds (make sure your designer creates your logo in black and in white to satisfy these needs if necessary)
- Very large and very, very small
- Alongside other company logos printed t-shirt, like those for specific products and services
It Should Look Great In Black And White
Remember that you will be advertising your business in newspapers, magazines, leaflets, etc ads. On such ads, usually, the publishers go for colorless printing of advertisements. In that case, your logo design must hold its impact on the viewers. Your logo appears impressive in colors. But if on newspaper ads, if it is less impressive, you should redesign the logo.
Similarly, you will also be sending your documents through fax to your clients. The logo should make a good impression on a faxed document as well in its colorless version. Similarly, leaflet design is usually in black and white as a less costly means of advertisement. Make sure that the logo in your leaflet campaign looks good.
Make It A Memorable Design
One of the qualities of global companies’ logos is that they all are memorable piece of work. Your logo should also be a design that people can have in their memories for a long time. If that does not happen, the logo may fail in winning loyalty of your customers.
A simple trick to create memorable logos is to first have a unique concept. A unique design concept is the one that no one has ever used before. For example, Nike’s swoosh logo design is unique as it just a simple swoosh that no other sports company used before and after.
Logos or Pepsi, Coca-Cola, and McDonald’s are great example of memorable designs. Such logos have become part of modern social culture. To come up with a memorable design for your logo, you can only rely on expert graphic designers.
It Should Be A Timeless Design
Would you like to create a new logo every second year? That is not possible for small businesses. Frequent changes in your original logo design is also not advisable for many reasons. If you redesign a logo so often, you are leaving your customers confused and directionless.
A logo should be modern in that it should be contemporary, yet not so nuanced with “hot” components that when the trend has run its course you’ll be left with something that feels outdated. Because then your company will also appear outdated to your prospects. But make sure that your overall approach is modern including specific elements such as colors, and typefaces.
