Best Practices For Logo Design And Creation
The importance of branding is becoming more and more prominent in our online world and community. Every company and business professional is expected to have some type of logo, symbol or branding. In the past, logos and branding have been designed by professionals. Now, there are a variety of websites and applications designed to help individuals create their own logos or branding materials. These websites and applications are very simple to learn and master. There are also several websites that provide resources such as templates for creating logos for experienced as well as up and coming graphic designers. While these services are convenient, there is more to creating your logo then simply using a ready made template. In this article, I will provide some steps and suggestions on how you can create and improve your logo designs.
The Logo Design And Creation Process
Step 1: Research Your Industry
The research you do before sitting down to create your logo is crucial. Many people have a tendency to skip the research step of logo design, and they end up with a terrible final concept. While it may be tempting to think that you know everything there is to know about your industry; don’t skip the logo design research. Look at examples of different logos used by other people in your industry. Which logos do you like? Which logos do you dislike? Spend some time thinking about why you like or dislike certain logos. While you should never copy someone else’s logo, using elements of their logo that you like can be a great way to design a logo that’s highly effective. Similarly, eliminating things you dislike about someone else’s logo can be equally effective for creating a great logo.
Step 2: Choose Your Colors
The colors you choose for your logo should fit with your overall branding. If you haven’t set the colors for your brand yet, creating a logo will be difficult. You should set your brand’s colors before creating a logo, because not every design works with every color scheme. It would be a waste of time to design a great logo, only to find out later that is doesn’t work with your branding colors.
Step 3: Sketch The Ideas For Your Design
Before sitting a the computer to design your logo, sketch out your ideas first. You don’t have to be a great artist to sketch out your ideas. The sketching process is only to provide a guide for your designing. It’s must easier to sketch something than it is to sit down and create something from scratch on a computer. Use your rough sketch to see what works and what doesn’t. That way you aren’t wasting time creating elements for a logo that don’t work well together.
Step 4: Design Your Logo
This step is somewhat self-explanatory, but I wanted to use this section to provide some guidelines and best practices for logo design.
Logos Should Always Be Scalable
When you’re designing your logo, choose a design that is infinitely scaleable. Your logo should look great as a label for an ink pen as well as a giant billboard on the highway. Keep scaleability in mind from the time you start sketching out the first ideas for your logo. Use a vector program to create your logo. If you’re unfamiliar with vector formats you can read my article A Brief Overview of Photoshop, Illustrator, and Indesign here on the Freepik blog. A vector logo will give you the most flexibility for scaling and future editing.
Logos Should Look Great In Color, Grayscale And Black & White
So many people make the mistake of creating a beautiful logo that looks great in color, but terrible in black and white. Your logo will be used in several different scenarios and situations, so you need to insure that it can accommodate any environment. For the same reason you should make your logo scaleable, you should make your logo color independent. A well designed logo will look great no matter the size or color it is distributed in.
Logos Should Be Consistent With The Overall Branding Of The Person Or Company
Your logo is a key component in your personal and company branding. There should never be a mismatch in the logo design and the overall branding. Your logo should complement your branding and visa versa. When viewers see your logo, they should be able to instantly identify the theme of your business. You wouldn’t use a pizza logo for an accounting company would you? Hopefully not! That would be very confusing to your customers. Consistency is very important in logo design.
With all the tools available, designing your own logo is easier than ever. For smaller companies or individuals, designing your own logo can be a very cost effective alternative to paying a professional designer. While a professional designer will give the best results, you can achieve some wonderful logo designs by following the above steps and suggestions.
