Logos are the face of your business. With one glance, they should communicate to potential clients and customers something essential about your brand. It stands to reason, then, that some careful thought needs to go into designing an effective logo.
Today we will share ten top tips on how to design your own logo.
Types of Logos
Before we get started with our tips, let's first define exactly what a logo is. A logo is essentially a symbol that helps identify and promote a business, product, or organisation.
Logos come in three basic forms: image-based logos, text-based logos, and a combo of image and text, which is the most common type of logo.
Before we begin, you may want to check out this video focused on Mastering Logo Design in Adobe Illustrator, to create logos that start with a bang.
10 Top Tips on How to Design a Logo
Tip #1 Get Inspired
Custom logo design starts with a bit of inspiration. Study the logos of successful brands that you like and identify ask yourself what kind of logo it is. Is it a text-based logo, an image-based logo, or a combination of the two?
What makes the logo interesting or different? What does the logo communicate about the brand? How does it communicate that message through the image it uses, the colour, the text, or all of the above? Studying the logos of successful brands can help you understand what makes a logo effective and ultimately help you understand how to design a good logo.
Tip #2 Determine What You Want Your Logo to Communicate
Casual logo designers may believe that to design a logo, you get to work immediately with pencil and paper or software, but in fact the first step you need to take in your do-it-yourself logo design venture is to determine what you want your logo to communicate.
For example, a toy store may want a logo that communicates fun and thus would use a graphic that is quirky or goofy and/or has bright colours. An organic store may want to communicate health and may use earth colours and images from nature. An architecture company may want to communicate cutting-edge innovation and may use a graphic with extreme angles and choose chrome as the dominant colour.
The best way to make sure that your logo hits the mark is to get clear about what you want it to communicate. So don't skip this step.
Tip #3 Determine What Colours Best Support Your Idea
Colour affects both our emotions and our behaviours and thus plays a critical role in designing a successful logo.
It is important, therefore, that you understand what impact different colours have and use them consciously to stimulate the response to your logo that you want from prospective clients. If you want to know more about how each colour affects us and which colour schemes might work best for your brand, check out the article below.
Tip #4 Keep It Simple
Again, the casual logo designer may be tempted to overcomplicate things, but the best logo design is actually quite simple. A simple logo is easy to recognise and remember, as well as easy to use in a variety of media.
Tip #5 Make It Memorable
Professional logo designers strive to create logos that identify and differentiate a brand, capture the viewer’s attention, and leave a positive and lasting impression. If your logo isn't memorable, it's a fail for your brand and business, so remember a logo can be simple but never boring.
Tip #6 It's Got to Be Relevant
Okay, so here's the thing. It is imperative that the logo you choose is relevant to your business in some way.
This doesn't mean that if you sell clothes your logo has to be an item of clothing. It can be, but a more interesting choice might be to choose a graphic related to clothing.
Tip #7 Make It Classic
Trends come and trends go, and some of them are very exciting and interesting, but if you intend for your company to stand the test of time, then you should avoid creating a logo that is so steeped in the trend of the moment that it will look dated 5 or 50 years from the day you put the finishing touches to it.
Tip #8 Strive for Versatility
Logos need to be versatile? Why? Because they need to work across a variety of media.
This means that you need to test your logo on the web and using different materials to see how well it does. You should also scale it way down or way up to see if legibility is affected. Essentially, a successful logo should look great under any circumstances.
Tip #9 Think About How You Use Negative Space
Negative space is the apparently empty space in and around your logo. This space can be put to good use: first, by creating breathing room for your logo, and secondly, by incorporating it in ways that involve double meanings or hidden imagery.
Often, this requires attention to the qualities of individual letters and shapes and seeing how they might be combined to create a second layer of meaning.
Tip #10 Use a Template
There are many ways you can create a custom logo design. You can hire a graphic designer, or if you are familiar with Illustrator you can use this terrific tutorial to help you create your own logo in no time at all.
But really, why spend hundreds on bespoke graphic design or tons of hours creating a logo from scratch when you can use professional logo design templates to create your own custom logo designs.
If you are familiar with Photoshop, Envato Elements has tons of terrific templates that you can customise to create stunning logos. Check out these terrific articles to find out more about these incredible templates.
Alternatively, if you have little or no knowledge of Photoshop, there are templates that allow you to create a logo without Photoshop, like the many terrific templates featured here from Placeit.
If, for instance, you want to create a logo for a summer camp, the Placeit Camp Logo Maker can help. Check out this video to discover how easy it is to create a logo without Photoshop:
Design Your Own Logo Today
Learning how to design your own logo is quite challenging, but templates will make your work so much easier. With the logo maker from Placeit, you can create a logo without Photoshop in no time at all, and of course, if you have a working knowledge of Photoshop, you can find terrific templates at Envato Elements that help you create logos that start with an A++ in no time at all.
Follow the steps outlined here, check out the templates, and if you want more logo resources, take a look at these helpful articles below:
