In 2022 Instagram has completely turned into a platform that offers lots of opportunities for business – any content creator, brand owner or an individual services provider can find their audience here and find ways for their content’s monetization. However, from a pretty random platform Instagram has also turned into a social media that has pretty obvious and logical rules of success that anyone should know and follow, and the main one of them is that the visuals of the profile that wants to gather a decent audience have to be on fleek.
Surely, there is a chance to buy Instagram followers, an option to set a targeted ad or ask for PR from bloggers, but if the profile doesn’t have a satisfying cover for everybody to see and enjoy, all of the efforts will be for nothing. So before turning to the promotional part, you have to do a lot of work on your page, especially – on its visuals.
What role does a logo play?
So a logo is the main picture of your Instagram profile (if we are talking about a business account) which should be speaking of what you’re doing on this platform and who you are very clearly. This is, basically, a quintessential part of your page which should help people understand everything about you by taking just a single glimpse on it.
Most of the times, people prefer hiring a specialist who would create a logo for them – this is called working on the identity of the brand, it includes not only a logo, but also a color scheme of the brand and of the profile (if the work is being done to the brand and its social media at the same time, often enough it is being created as a wholesome conception), a tone of voice and major guidelines for the formats of the content. However, if you don’t have enough money for ordering a complex approach to your page, you can work with a graphic designer individually or even create a logo yourself. And the quality is going to completely depend on the amount of time and effort spent: we can guarantee that you (if you have at least a minor viewability and a sense of style) will be able to create a selling logo that is going to be not worse than if it would be done by a specialist.
How to make a logo yourself?
Here it should start with choosing the level of effort and originality that you’re willing to put into the logo (and the level of skills and technical supplies that you have on hand). Generally speaking, there are two ways that you can follow: a) use templates that free design apps offer (e.g. Canva, Piscart, etc) or b) create the logo from scratch, relying on your own drawing and designing abilities.
But before that it is better to get some references and inspirations, and the best place to do it is Pinterest, for sure. You have to specify what style you’re going to follow, what the colors are going to be (think of them according to your brand’s or profile’s philosophy, aims and mood) and what program you’re going to use to create the logo. For example, you can make your search query look like this: “logos for Instagram minimalistic earth tones” and the website is going to show you the examples of what your logo could look like. And yes: it is better to think of not one, but several logos for your profile – you are going to need several ones for organizing your highlights as well.
Create a board on Pinterest and gather all the ideas that you will be able to dig here: color palettes, inspirational photos maybe (if you’re going to use Photoshop for creating a logo those might be extra helpful), the examples of logos that you find appropriate for your profile. After the board is done, filter your ideas and leave only 3-5 of the pictures that you find the most appropriate. This is what you’re going to work with in the future.
Quick remark: there is an option to not make the logo by yourself at all. Pinterest offers lots of packs of free logos, so if you don’t feel like spending time on the process, you can find some royalty free images and use them as your main picture and pics for highlights. This option is suitable for beginners who are here to simply try how Instagram is going to work for them.
Another quick remark: Even if you’d work on the visuals very hard and make them look stunning, you still need support for your profile from the side. Think about a chance to buy real Instagram followers – this is probably the best tool to give your page a booster.
What apps and programs can be used to create the logo and what are their pros and cons?
1. AAA Logo: Here you can create a nice png in 5 minutes. The AAA logo program does not require deep knowledge in the field of graphic design and contains a huge number of different templates and many tools for the development of personal logos. It is possible to fine-tune each element separately. It’s simple: choose a color, gradient, transparencies and write the text. Voila! The stylish logo for your company is ready. You can export logos in gif, png, bmp, jpg file format, and also easily convert the image file produced by AAA Logo to eps, svg or pdf vector. You can download the program for the Windows operating system on this website. A free demo version is also available and might be enough for some of you.
2. Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator: We place these two into one graph, because we totally realize that both of these programs take special knowledge to operate by their tools. Surely, if you have time to figure out these programs, your logo is going to be done on a whole another level, totally unique and authentic. However, the choice is yours: there are lots of options out there that don’t demand such level of patience and precision as those two do.
3. Corel Draw: This one is also for the people who aren’t afraid to spend some time on figuring it out. The big advantage of this program is that thanks to its intuitive interface, it can be easily used by both professional graphic designers and beginners in this field. In this program you can create vector pics, which are described by various mathematical formulas. When creating an object, its coordinates are set, as well as the color, thickness and style of the line. Pretty unusual, isn’t it? Corel DRAW has a number of advantages, e.g.: the ability to invent your own fonts, convert bitmaps into vector images, draw pictures from scratch, as well as use tracing capabilities, working out contours and drawing patterns. Thanks to the above functions, Corel DRAW is a fairly convenient program for creating logos, and the ease of use adds even more charm to it.
4. If you don’t have time for working on a PC and spending so much time on just a logo, you can use apps for smartphones. For example, a Logo Maker for iOS. Thanks to its minimalistic design, the built-in database of templates and fonts and hints for each section, the Logo Maker application quickly won the love of iOS device users all over the world. Working with the application is very simple: take a template, then add text by selecting the desired font and color. The last step is choosing the background for your symbol. That’s all, you can add your trademark to all photos on your social media page. The app is free, but the advanced functionality is available only by paid subscription.
5. Logo Maker Plus for Android: This one offers endless opportunities for creativity and also makes it pretty simple to assemble a logo from scratch. It is possible to save ready pic to Dropbox, Evernote and Box. And if you suddenly want to show off your creation to friends or colleagues, you can always send the final result by email or upload it directly to Facebook. The app is free, but there are in-app purchases.
So, what are the main aspects of a “selling” logo?
According to the marketers, a logo should carry lots of functions: impressive function for the consumer, expressive function for the brand or the company itself, the poetic function and the referential function – and the sum of those four are forming a logo that is decent and speaks for all the parts of the product or a service that a person or a company is willing to sell. However, all of those terms are pretty hard to understand for somebody who’s not familiar with the marketing sphere, so we’re going to generalize it this way: a logo should carry the key info about your product, be inviting and friendly towards the consumer and have uniqueness and creative elements in it. If you’d try and succeed in combining all of those aspects, you’re going to create your profile a wholesome “face” that is going to be memorizable and coherent at the same time.
