Are you frustrated with your brand’s logo? Do you think you need some help redesigning or tweaking your logo a bit? If your logo could use a facelift, check out our portfolio and blog to learn more.
In this post, we’ll talk about 7 logo design tips from top designers and experts around the world and learn some tips that will help you improve your logo so that you put your best foot forward to the world.
7 Logo Design Tips from the Experts
1. Know your competition.– Apple designers are a prime example of knowing your competition. Their logo, “Think different,” illustrates how they have been able to create a unique branding through their logo that is different from everyone else’s. The original Apple logo with a bite out of the Apple has created a sense of intrigue and uniqueness for the Apple brand for years, and they continue to enjoy the results of their original approach to branding.
2. Focus on branding.– Michael Johnson, the author of Branding, a book that focuses on the important elements of creating a brand, talks about how the creative process of creating a logo that matches your brand is one of the most important steps in branding. The Co-op company adds that branding should be true to the brand’s heritage and look back at the history of a brand to determine how they should represent their brand to the masses.
Some brands have achieved success by using a retro brand logo that appeals to the sentimental fans who remember the way that brand first began. One example is the Coca-Cola company who went through a series of different logos before realizing people liked the original logo the best. There are times to make some changes and times to keep things the way they are.
The only way to know what you should do with your brand is to try different things and see how people respond to it. You won’t please everyone, but you want your brand and your logo to appeal to most people who buy your products. Having a psychological or emotional connection to your brand is at the heart of the psychology of branding.
3. Choose your typeface carefully.– Google reminds us that your typeface is an essential aspect of your brand that can make or break your image online. Google went through a lot of different changes to their logo over the years. But in the end, they came back to their original red, green, yellow, and blue letters that had made them so popular in the beginning. They do still feature special fonts during a special holiday or event, but their basic search engine is adorned with the staple logo.
4. Explore unique letter combinations and designs.– Uniqueness is the key to success with your brand and logo. The more unique your logo is, the more you will attract an audience that will appreciate your branding. Creating a unique letter combination or adding attributes to your logo will enhance your logo with your target audience. The Yves Saint Lawrence dollar sign lockup image is one example of how you can use lettering uniquely.
5. Understand shape psychology.– Using shapes and colors in a varied way can also increase your impact with your target audience. Colors such as red and blue have a universal meaning that may appeal and help cross cultural lines to appeal to a larger group of people. If you study the meaning of different colors, it will give you a lot of insight into what various colors mean so that you can use this to your advantage when designing your logo.
6. Use negative space to your advantage.– Some designers try to use up all of the space in design. But the experts say it’s a good practice to allow some negative or white space in the background. It makes the image look cleaner and less cluttered, which likely appeals to a larger number of people. There’s a lot of “noise” on the internet, so if you can create a clean-looking image, it will look better for your brand. The NBC logo of a peacock with the white background is a good example of this. It uses negative space in the background, as well as accents of white in the front, as well.
7. Use wit and humor.– Alan Fletcher, well-known graphic and logo design says to utilize wit and humor to create a great logo. The Amazon logo is an example of this with the smiley face that forms the Amazon logo along with the lettering. Fletcher is the founding partner of Pentagram, but the Amazon designer, Turner Duckworth, seems to agree from the look of Amazon’s graphic design.
It works for Amazon, and they have not changed their logo much since Duckworth designed the logo.
What Can We Learn from these Designers?
No two logo designs are alike, and they shouldn’t be! The key to success with a logo is to create something unique that will stand the test of time. Changes can be made when there is need to do so, though. If your logo doesn’t seem to match up to your expectations, you can always brainstorm ways that you can improve it using some of these techniques.
Summarizing what these top brands and designers are saying, you should think about the way you use space (including negative space), colors, shapes, and lettering, and all of the other assets that make up a logo. Experiment with different designs and see how people respond to them before committing to a particular layout. You can always make subtle changes later.
Branding vs. Logo Design
There is also something to be said about branding vs. logo design.
As Mark Bonner and Bruce Duckworth put it in this video on logo design, a logo is not all there is to branding. They analyze the aspect of branding vs. logo design in the video above, and it’s well worth watching.
They say that successful brands are a combination of the brand and the business working together and that a good logo should naturally evolve from the personality of the brand. They inspire logo designers and business owners to expand their ideas regarding their brand and to find your best logo by exploring the possibilities.
Creative vs. Technical
There is a fine line between the creative and the technical aspects of brand and logo design and development. Logo design is just an artistic and creative design that echoes the various aspects of a brand. There is a technical aspect too, in the drawing and rendering of the design.
Use your own judgment.
In the end, only you can decide what is best for your brand. Your logo is a unique aspect of your brand, and you should brainstorm different ideas until you find what works best for your branding. You could also perform a split A/B test to see which one does best with your customers.
Remember that your logo will be everywhere once you create it, so it needs to be professional-looking and versatile. You want it to work on all types of materials such as physical products as well as online sites and blogs.
Social media is another important place to house your logo so think about the technical requirements and specifications that you’ll use as a standard for your brand’s logo. Following the social media technical specifications is important so that your logo will look as good as possible on the different platforms.
Wherever your brand is, it needs to look good. Your logo reflects the power and personality of your brand, so make sure you have a professional logo that you’ll be proud of.
If you need help designing your logo, contact us at logodesignteam.com. We know logo design and we can help you come up with some great ideas for your logo.
