A Process of Logo Design: Guidelines for Entrepreneurs

Today we have a guest post on small business logo design best practices by Ben Johnson of Logoinn, a custom logo design service provider based in  the UK.   Enjoy, and best wishes for a happy Mothers Day this weekend (you did remember, right?).  –  Bryan

A business logo is an iconic representation of your company’s mission, vision, and target market. A well-designed logo can build a good relationship between you and your customer, whereas a logo, which is not properly designed, could make your customer to perceive wrong image about your company and then switch to the competitor.

Think of a Nike, what first comes in your mind, a “swoosh”, this swoosh tells everything about the company. Think again about the McDonald’s golden arches, you come to know all about what company does just by looking at the logo. Your logo should be like this, it should tell everything about your company. But many companies don’t have such logos that can develop the distinctive brand identity.

Therefore, as a business owner, you should know some key aspects of design process to go hand in hand with your logo designer. This however doesn’t mean that you learn the tools of designing, but you should know some basic design elements to give feedback during the design process.

 

Getting started with hiring a designer:

 

When you think it’s time to design a logo for your company, it is better not to design it by yourself, no matter how much you know about designing. It is however better to go to any professional advertising agency or design firm, but the problem of hiring an advertising agency is the higher cost that could be thousands of dollars.

The other option is a freelance logo designer. The good thing with freelance is that they will charge you very less amount, but there is no reliability that how they going to design your logo or whether they don’t leave you in between the design process.

It’s better for you to search the Internet and find a logo design company which better know about your industry and market competition. Not only they will charge you less but give you fine piece of logo design with the option of several rounds of revision until you get a perfect logo for your business.

 

Things to consider during the design process:

After hiring a suitable logo design company, you must check the following design elements and give feedback during the whole design process.

• Logo should be simple:  Before your designer start your logo design project, you just clearly communicate him that you need a simple yet powerful logo design for your company. Why simple design? You must have seen the logos of large organizations; their logos are very simple in design but very appealing to the eyes. For Instance, the “Swoosh” of Nike or the “M” of McDonald. They are very simple but leave lasting impression on the viewer’s mind.
• Logo should portray the message of your business.  Another thing you should tell your designer that you need a logo which must portray the message of your business. This however doesn’t mean that your logo specifically portrays what your company does but simply describes from which industry you belong to. Like if you are a realtor, obviously you like to have a logo with the image of houses or something that can better tell you are a real estate person. In addition, tell him that color, design, font and other necessary element should be according to the business type. You can’t have a cartoonish logo for a real estate business or a dark black logo for children products.
• Avoid clip-art.  Never allow him to use clip art. Clip arts are seen by lot of people already, and if a clip-art is used within your logo, your logo will come out as an unprofessional emblem that cannot match with your business personality. Therefore, strictly prohibit the use of clipart; otherwise your logo will not be a one of its kind.
• It should be re-sizable.    Usually, when you go to any amateur logo designer, it is a greater chance that he will not design your logo with any vector based application. But if you still have found any not so expert designer, clearly tell him to provide logos in vector format. Vector format allow you to re-size your logo as big as to print on a billboard and as small as to print on a pen.
• Avoid overlapping of text and artwork.  Some logos come only with text, some come as image only, but some logos have both the image and the text. So advice your logo designer to design in way that the image and the text should make a logo one thing, but should not get intermingled with each other.

 

Make it your business trademark:

After you receive the final formats, it’s time to make it a trademark for your company to save yourself from potential trademark infringements and law suits. You can apply for a trademark at your country’s Patent and Trademark Office.

After making it a trademark, you can use it to any marketing collateral you want. Use it to the maximum to build your company’s visibility and credibility.

Creating a logo is easy as well as difficult. If you follow the proper course, there is nothing that can stop you to get a perfect logo for your company. Remember, you are going to make your logo an identity of your company, which you may not replace very soon, so keep your customers and nature of business in mind while designing a logo.

3 Responses to “A Process of Logo Design: Guidelines for Entrepreneurs”

1. Mark on May 8th, 2009:

   What are some vector based design programs? I know illustrator is vector based. Is Quark? Is InDesign?

   I think a lot of these logo principles could also carry over to out of home advertising. There are multiple ads on the CTA with too many elements to catch anyone’s attention. Same goes for billboards. These things need to be kept simple.

2. David Hall on May 8th, 2009:

   Really good advice here. Thanks for sharing. Some helpful tips here for the “make sense” approach to marketing/branding/logo building process. Simple. Like it.

3. Miguelina Bushfield on May 8th, 2009:

   Hey there! Do you know if they make any plugins to safeguard against hackers? I’m kinda paranoid about losing everything I’ve worked hard on. Any suggestions?