A company logo is an important part of your business. It’s a visual representation of your business and it’s usually the first thing people see when they interact with your business online.
Even the best of designers find it challenging when it comes to designing a compelling logo. Getting it right can be tricky. FourSeeds has put together seven design steps to help and guide you on your next logo design.
1. Create a brief and budget
The very first step is to ensure you create a detailed brief for your designer listing your expectations, goals, brand attributes and personality, target market, competitors in the market, designs you like and dislike budget and timelines.
Creating a detailed brief and setting the expectations from the start ensures that your logo designs will be on target with fewer changes and time wasted.
Logos are important. Budget for them accordingly.
2. Brand Personality & Typefaces
Firstly, a typeface is a set of characters of the same design. These characters include letters, numbers, punctuation marks, and symbols. Some popular typefaces include Arial, Times, and Verdana.
Each typeface has a personality and you need to work with your designer to select the right option for your business and brand.
Bold fonts can come across strong and loud and softer flowing fonts provide a calm and relaxed feeling. Selecting the right font for your logo is one of the most important steps.
We recommend that you should keep to a maximum of two typefaces. Anymore than two and the logo will look too busy.
3. Trendy or timeless
Your logo needs to be fresh and modern, but you need to ensure your logo is not a trend, that will be outdated in a couple of years. You want your logo to be timeless. Always use standard easy to read fonts, colours and images that will stand the test of time.
4. File Formats
When selecting a designer, it imperative that you ask that your final approved artwork is supplied in vector format such as Adobe Illustrator. You need the versatility to scale your logo down to a postage stamp size and enlarged to a banner without compromising on image quality.
5. Trademarks and Plagiarism
You need to ensure your new name and logo design doesn’t impede on any trademarks or plagiarises another companies design. You want to ensure your logo is unique and original to your business. Trademark infringements and plagiarism can negatively affect the branding of your company and result in expensive legal battles. It’s always recommended conducting a trademark search before finalising any new company names or logos. For medium to large businesses it is recommended that you trademark your brand name words and the design in Australia and any other countries that you operate within. For a full list of trademarks in Australia visit – https://www.ipaustralia.gov.au/trade-marks
6. Colour Selection
When you design a logo, one of the biggest decisions is selecting your brand’s colours. Picking the right colour palette helps establish your identity. Psychology of colours is an important consideration when you build a brand identity. The right palette can convey deep meaning about your values and elicit specific behaviours.
Red – Energy, love, romance, heart pumping, warmth
White – Represents purity, cleanness, clarity and innocence
Yellow – Friendly, cheerful, youthful, energy and happiness
Orange – Energy, Excitement, prosperity, warmth, change
Purple – spiritual, luxury, truthfulness, high quality
Green – Nature, Health, Wealth, Tranquillity, Harmony
Blue – Wisdom, loyalty, sophistication, calm
Black – power, strength, glamour, luxury
Grey – Timelessness, Classic, Mystery
7. Busy and complex designs
Less is more. White space is ok. Your logo needs to be simple, effective and resonate with your target market.
The world’s largest brands such as Apple, Google, Macdonalds and Nike all have one thing in common, their logos are simple yet memorable.
Don’t over complicate your logo design, keep it simple and clean.
Designing a new logo can be a daunting experience, FourSeeds Marketing can work with you to ensure your new logo design meets your business needs. Contact Katie via email – katie@fourseedsmarketing.com.au or mobile 0404 037 479.
