How to Design a Brand Logo
Is designing your brand logo something you should address only once all your other marketing design is set in stone, or a priority task to tackle before building out your branding any further? Is it a work in progress that will evolve over time, like the six different iterations of the Apple logo, or a classic not to be tampered with, like the Nike swoosh?
There’s no right answer, but there are wrong ways to go about designing your brand logo: play it safe, try to keep everyone happy, imitate the competition, or start out without a clear idea of what this simple symbol is supposed to represent, and you will miss the mark. Follow these three design marketing principles to arrive at a brand logo design that inspires your employees and engages your audience.
Marketing by Design: Plan it Out
Before you hire a design agency, like Pepsi did when it paid $1 million for a new logo design in 2009, or invite submissions from graphic designer, like Nike did when it paid student Carolyn Davidson $35 for the swoosh, there are certain marketing design questions to answer internally:
- What is our brand message? If your company doesn’t have a clear mission statement, what is the logo supposed to represent?
- What style are we looking for? Do you want your designer to explore options for a wordmark (eg. Coca-Cola, facebook), mascot (eg. Twitter, Hawke Media), emblem (eg. Shell, NBC), or pictorial (eg. apple, Target). Should it be hand-drawn or generic, edgy, or comfortable?
- What color(s)? It is estimated that 80% of visual information conveyed by a logo is from color alone. Color psychology plays an important role, and will be heavily influenced by the color palette associated with your sector (eg. reds are abundant in food and drink, blues in communications, and blacks in fashion) and your competitors.
- What font? Imagine some of the world’s most recognizable logos (that feature letters) in a different font. The effect would be jarring, which underlines why the choice between serif and sans serif or classic and modern is so crucial.
Once you have the parameters for where you want your brand logo to sit, unleash your designer or agency to experiment with different versions. Focus for the moment on creating options, not judging or micro-managing the process. In the spirit of brainstorming, there’s “no such thing as a bad idea” during this phase.
Follow Your Inspiration
You don’t have to be a designer by trade to create a memorable logo. Many of the world’s most famous logos — from the D&G and Dior to 3M — could be created in Microsoft Word (as could the Microsoft logo). The element that makes a logo so distinctive is not the complexity, but the simplicity.
Where should you look for inspiration? Anywhere is fair game. Look for inspiration on Pinterest and Instagram, in comic books and on album covers, and even in the natural world. An insect, flower, or city skyline glimpsed at sunset might provide the eureka moment, if only for a second or two. Play around with as many different versions as time and budget allows until a coherent pattern emerges.
When it comes to presenting your shortlist to leadership or other stakeholders, there should be a common thread that links the various options. If options are unrecognizable from one another, such as your logo depicts a mascot in one version and only a stylized word in the other, it’s time to go back to the literal drawing board.
Follow Your Inspiration
You don’t have to be a designer by trade to create a memorable logo. Many of the world’s most famous logos — from the D&G and Dior to 3M — could be created in Microsoft Word (as could the Microsoft logo). The element that makes a logo so distinctive is not the complexity, but the simplicity.
Where should you look for inspiration? Anywhere is fair game. Look for inspiration on Pinterest and Instagram, in comic books and on album covers, and even in the natural world. An insect, flower, or city skyline glimpsed at sunset might provide the eureka moment, if only for a second or two. Play around with as many different versions as time and budget allows until a coherent pattern emerges.
When it comes to presenting your shortlist to leadership or other stakeholders, there should be a common thread that links the various options. If options are unrecognizable from one another, such as your logo depicts a mascot in one version and only a stylized word in the other, it’s time to go back to the literal drawing board.
Keep It Simple
Few things in marketing design are harder than simplicity. Yet even in today’s landscape of minimalist logos, most would struggle to accurately recreate many of the top 100 most recognizable ones from memory. In one study by the University of California, for example, only a single student out of a possible 85 could correctly draw the Apple logo.
The good news is that it doesn’t seem to matter to the most important audience (as in customers, not designers). You don’t have to get all the colors in the right order to recognize the Google logo, or even be able to read to join the 94% of adults in the world who recognize the Coca Cola logo. Some brands are so strong that they can even remove their brand name and conventional logo entirely from their campaigns and still be recognized, a tactic that produced some memorable artwork for Guinness (black and white) and Doritos. Arguably the hardest part is knowing when to leave a good design or idea alone.
Need help with designing your business logo and establishing it as the central focus for your marketing design and company branding? Talk to our Branding Services team today to see how your business can speak with a clear voice and identity that’s impossible to ignore.
