Branding • Design
How to design a logo
By Yellow Circle
By Yellow Circle
What type of logo you need depends on your business; many different logo styles give customers different impressions. An abstract logo or symbol is a great way to create a unique visual that stands out.
What type of logo you need depends on your business; many different logo styles give customers different impressions. An abstract logo or symbol is a great way to create a unique visual that stands out.
A wordmark logo is a stylised version of your company name. Designers often use pre-existing fonts and make alterations specific to your business to help create a unique logo or custom wordmark from scratch.
A monogram logo uses a letter as the primary icon of a logo. Often, the first letter of the company name is used to create a monogram or a combination of letters if the business has more than one word in its name. A monogram logo is often a unique and customised letter like the McDonald’s M.
A symbol-based logo uses an image or graphic to create a unique icon representing a business. Some examples include the Twitter bird, the Nike swoosh and Apple’s…well, apple.
Abstract logos are often conceptual and represent a brand and what they do or what they believe in without using an obvious depiction. An example is the Pepsi logo, which uses shapes and colours to convey their hidden meaning instead of an image of a glass or can.
A mascot logo uses a character to be the face of the brand; these depictions can be people-focused or unique character designs. Think of the Pringles brand or KFC as excellent examples of mascot logos.
Dynamic logos can be used in multiple places and colours while maintaining recognisability with the overall brand. Dynamic logos are best suited for brands that need to catch a broad audience’s eye or have many sub-brands to fit underneath their overall logo.
Different logo styles represent companies in various ways to their customers. For example, mascot logos often suggest a trustworthy and friendly brand. Dynamic logos can indicate that a company is forward thinking and progressive, and other logo styles such as letterforms or wordmarks offer brands vast amounts of flexibility in appealing to their customers – think Asda and Waitrose; both of the brands have wordmark logos, but the impression they give is very different!
Getting started with designing your logo can seem daunting; there are many possibilities, but here are some simple tips and tricks to discover what is right for your business.
First, let’s start with some research. Take a look at your competitors’ logos; what is similar? What’s different? What do you like or not like? Are there any standard colours? By researching your competitors, you can understand how their logo works for their business. Another great tip is to research outside your market by looking at the logos of brands that match your values or brands you love. People should also consider businesses with similar names, who may not be in the same market but may present an issue further down the line.
Into the nitty gritty! Colour plays a significant role in the design of a logo, and the choice you make is essential here as colours have a role to play in your customer’s psychology. For example, what colour do you associate with danger? Red, exactly. But now think, what colour is a heart depicted as? Do you see where we are going?
Colour psychology can help you create the perfect logo, so consider the impression you’d like to give your potential customers. Would you like to appear trustworthy and secure? Maybe blue is the way to go. Want to give a happy and positive impression? Yellow would do the job there.
But don’t forget, you’re not limited to one colour. Look at brands like Mastercard, FedEx and Pepsi!
Having a set of brand colours that work well together is an excellent tool for creating brand recognition; as your brand becomes more popular, consumers associate those colours with your brand – think McDonald’s red and gold!
Another reason why it’s helpful to have multiple colour options is to give you some variety in your marketing. Some brands use specific colours to define a product or service, as Microsoft does with Word, Excel and PowerPoint, and some brands use different colours to make sure their content is always fresh and doesn’t look the same each time.
Overall, colour is a fantastic way of creating a cohesive and flexible brand and logo.
From your research, you’ll have a much better understanding of the logos in your industry. Now, it’s time to consider where you sit in that industry. Do you provide a higher-end service than your competitors? Is your business more budget-friendly? This information is critical to helping your designer create a logo that fits your business, its position and direction.
Wordmark logos are a popular choice; they allow maximum flexibility and enable brands to appeal to a broader audience, but take care when creating a wordmark logo! Choosing the right font can differentiate between an effective logo and one that customers ignore.
Let’s look at some famous wordmark logos. The Calvin Klein logo is set in all caps using a sans serif font, a strong and clean wordmark that implies high-end product quality. Let’s compare this with the Toys R Us logo, which is very dynamic, colourful and friendly.
When switched, these great wordmark logos wouldn’t work because they’ve been specifically designed to appeal to their audience and industry.
There are thousands and thousands of font choices, both free and paid, so considering your font when creating your brand can be a difficult decision but a real key to success. Knowing your audience is essential here! If your business works primarily with corporate clients, then a fun, quirky font probably isn’t the way to go. However, if your brand is about an exciting new product that needs to stand out on a shelf, then a more impactful and exciting font is the way to go.
To illustrate our point, we’ve swapped the fonts of a couple of businesses in very different industries below. See what we mean?
Many font providers are available online; some fonts are free for commercial use, and some must be licensed. Here are links to some of the best font resources.
When designing a logo, considering it part of your brand and not the whole one is super important! Remember to consider how your logo will work with printed materials such as brochures, flyers, products and adverts. How is it going to look on your website or social media pages? Does your logo match your tone of voice? If your business is friendly and approachable, does your logo reflect this?
Creating a brand starts with your logo, but your logo needs to be cohesive with your brand colours, fonts, imagery…everything!
It’s fair to say your logo is essential. Imagine you’ve got your logo designed and ready to go at this point; you couldn’t be more pleased with the result, except there’s a problem…your logo is in your brand colours, and you need to put it on top of a photo, oh no, you can’t see it correctly! Or you’re trying to set up your new social media accounts and realise you only have your logo in a landscape combination, and now you need a 1:1 square for your new profile picture!
It would help if you had a logo suite. A collection of different versions of your logo, specifically created to be used in certain situations.
It can be helpful to consider where your logo should be displayed.
We’ve listed some examples below to help you. Remember the importance of your logo being clear and visible when considering each. For example, a wide primary logo can look great on your website when using a laptop, but you can quickly run out of room when a customer uses your website on their phone.
Website
Products
Print and other offline advertising
These variations also allow for the right logo to be used in the right situation, where you need a logo of a specific shape because of design or space requirements, like a website menu on a desktop versus a mobile phone or a circular social media profile picture.
Social Media is essential for almost every business now, so ensuring you have a version of your logo designed to fit in a social media profile photo is essential. This can be achieved by having versions of your logo with the company name abbreviated or by having a version with just the logo’s icon.
Cover Images – Some social media platforms require images that can be utilised on multiple devices. Here’s an example of what the design would have to fit into.
Print & Digital Use Logos
Your colours are perfect, and you love them; the logo is up on your website and looking great, but now your brochures are back from the printer, and that beautiful yellow you chose now looks a little…sickly. Problems such as this are easily avoidable by having print and web/digital-ready versions of your logo. You NEED a version of your logos in a CMYK colour format (for print) and an RGB format (for digital use) to avoid these problems.
Now that you’ve got your different logo variations, you’ll need a few different file types to use in the correct places.
JPEG/JPG: This is a flat image of your logo. It has a background colour that is perfect for social media profile images and graphics.
PNG: The most versatile file type for your logo, PNG’s often have a transparent background, meaning you can place this logo on top of other images.
EPS: This vector version of your logo is both editable and scalable. This version of your logo is perfect for designers and printers to use.
SVG: An SVG is also a vector version of your logo; the difference here is that SVG versions of your logo can be used on your website to ensure it’s always crisp, clean and looking its best – no stray pixels here!
Seasonal, supportive and commemorative logos have become very common across social media platforms, with brands supporting the LGBTQ+ community and campaigns such as Black History Day. These logos can be a great way for your brand to show your support.
When creating a logo, it’s essential to understand how it will look in the real world. This can be achieved by creating ‘mock-ups’ to see how the logo will look on websites, social media, signage, and brochures – almost anything is possible!
Remember to ask your designer to mock up elements relevant to your business.
Being too proud
You know your business better than anyone, but remember that your designer will have years of training and experience creating logos for companies like yours. Trust their judgment and listen to their ideas. It can lead to incredible results!
Not researching a concept
There are millions of logos out there, so ensuring that your concept is not in use or, worse, trademarked is a vital step in the logo process. A great way to check this is using Google’s reverse image search.
Not considering the future
Many businesses design their logo for where their business is currently, which can be a mistake. Considering the future of your brand can be a fantastic way of future-proofing, goal setting and cost-saving, as you won’t have to go through the rebranding process for much longer.
Not exploring multiple concepts
By sticking with one idea throughout the process, you never know what opportunity you missed. Some of the best logos have come from combining concepts or trying something new.