Your company’s design and logo help tell your brand story. Your logo is one visual element of your business many people can recognize to increase your brand awareness and help you successfully promote sales.
Unfortunately, a bad logo can negatively impact your business, and it could cause you to lose potential customers and clients. Here are easy solutions for improving your company’s design and logo.
Understand What Makes a Good Logo
A good logo is not just slapping a design on a page. Many key elements go into an effective design. These are:
Memorability
Your logo is supposed to be one of the most recognizable visual marketing tools that can promote your brand’s identity. The best logo designs of all time are memorable. Once you’ve gained brand awareness, someone should be able to read your business name and picture your logo in their head.
The best logos are unique and don’t use any elements from another company.
Simplicity
One thing that makes your logo memorable is its simplicity. A complicated logo is less likely to be remembered because there are too many design elements. Instead, aim for something super simple.
The simpler your logo, the better it is for building loyalty and improving customer recognition.
Versatility
Your company logo will be used across many different mediums and platforms, including but not limited to:
- Billboards
- Commercials
- Social media
- Print advertising
- Digital advertising
- Websites
- Business cards
- Business documents
- Internal communication
Your brand’s identity needs to be able to function on a business card or social media. This is another reason why simplicity is so important. The simpler the design, the easier someone can read it on a mobile device.
Appropriateness
Your logo needs to match the type of business you run and the identity you are trying to portray. For example, if your business is a veterinary office, you wouldn’t want to use an image of food for your logo just because you like the image. You should also consider your audience. If you’re a business that makes kids’ toys, you might want to use a colorful logo that can attract their attention and demonstrate your company promotes fun for kids.
When it comes to determining the appropriateness of the logo, you may not want to make it too literal, especially if your business is going to grow. For example, the Mcdonald’s logo doesn’t have an image of a chicken nugget on its logo because that would limit brand awareness. By not providing any image other than the golden arches, Mcdonald’s still has an effective logo design.
Timelessness
An effective logo is a logo that will never have to be changed throughout the years. Strong brand identity is built through effective design, not around emerging trends. If you choose to go with a trendy logo, you’ll end up having to change your design every so often to stay up to date with current trends.
Know Your Target Audience
Knowing your target audience is key to creating an effective logo design. At the end of the day, your logo design is not for you; it’s for them. Make sure you take the time to identify your target audience and let your designer know what their likes and interests are, along with their demographics.
Designing a logo for a toy company is going to be different than designing a logo for a company that sells electric furnaces because of the different target audiences. The toy company logo should be fun and exciting, while the electric furnace company should have a more professional look.
Forget About Your Personal Taste
Your logo should never include elements just because you like them. Remember, it’s all about your target audience. Colors are one of the most important pieces of your logo design, and they shouldn’t be chosen based on whether or not you like them. Instead, consider the meanings behind certain colors.
Work With a Designer or Agency
If you don’t have an in-house graphic designer, you may want to consider working with a professional designer or agency to help design your logo and your overall brand identity. When talking to a designer or an agency about logo design, make sure you ask for a portfolio showcasing their skills so you can determine if they’re the right person for the job.
The designer or agency you work with will ask you a ton of questions so they can get your logo design or redesign right the first time.
Quick Fixes to Improve Your Logo
Some logos don’t need to be completely redesigned; They just need a little bit of help. To drastically improve your logo, try these quick fixes;
- Use Contrasting Colors
The color combinations you use in your design and logo should be easy on the eyes. Nobody should be struggling to understand what your logo is or what words it says since they’ll likely be looking at it on a screen that’s smaller than your designer’s, such as their mobile phones.
- Highlight Elements to Make Your Logo Pop
If your logo doesn’t pop or stand out from the background, then you can try highlighting certain parts of it.
- Avoid Confusing Letter Case Combinations
In some cases, lettering can get confusing. A lowercase “l” can look like a capital “I,” and sometimes letters can look like numbers when the design is ineffective.
- Create Multiple Variations
Once you’ve decided on the elements you’re going to use in your design, create variations of them so you can use them in different circumstances. For example, on social media, you’ll need to have a square logo for your profile picture. In other circumstances, you might want to use the rectangular version of your logo.
Applying Your New Logo
Your new and improved logo should be versatile enough to go about anywhere, from a t-shirt to a mobile device. Consider all of the situations where you could use your logo, including your website, company swag, and all of your advertising opportunities.
Remember, most of the interactions people have with your brand will be through their phones or tablet, so it’s important your logo can adapt to small screens. This is where having multiple variations will come in handy. Once your new logo is complete, you can begin using it to market your company and improve brand recognition.
About the author
Matt Casadona has a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, with a concentration in Marketing and a minor in Psychology. Matt is passionate about marketing and business strategy and enjoys San Diego life, traveling, and music.
Matt Casadona
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