If you’re getting ready to launch your brand, you’ve probably been busy checking things off your to-do list. A great logo should be right up near the top of that list!
Logos are vital to crafting a recognizable brand. They identify products, let your customers know what to look for, and can be used to tie all of your marketing efforts together, regardless of what platforms are involved.
Your logo will likely be the first point of contact with your potential customer, so it needs to make a big impression, and fast.
But as you or your designer of choice work out the details of your design, it’s important to remember that there are five characteristics that absolutely must be in the finished product.
We’re not talking about the individual elements that make up a logo, like color, font, and graphic choices. We’re talking about qualities that will make your logo stand out from the crowd.
After all, anyone can design a logo — but it takes something special to make a logo truly effective.
Let’s take a look at these five characteristics:
- Excellent messaging
- Personality
- Uniqueness
- Memorability
- Versatility
Excellent Messaging
Messaging comes first, because one thing that you need to make sure of is sending the right message to your audience.
Much of your message is communicated by your choices of individual elements.
- Your color choice can be chosen to appeal to your target audience if you apply the principles of color psychology.
- Your font choice also sends a message, should be chosen based on your market, and needs to be legible and user-friendly.
- Your overall style should harmonize with your brand personality — but more on that later.
However, messaging isn’t just about helping your viewer to read between the lines. It’s also important that they read the actual lines. Make sure that you include the necessary details in your logo. Consider using a logotype, which uses your company name as the logo itself, or a combination mark, which uses your company name combined with a graphic. Ultimately, a big part of the logo’s effectiveness will come down to how easy it is to identify it as belonging to your company.
Personality
Much has been written about how to establish and display your brand personality — the first key, of course, is identifying what that personality is.
Is your brand family-oriented? Youthful and edgy? Unique and quirky? Serious and responsible?
Whichever descriptions most accurately identify the motivating force behind your brand, those same descriptions should come into play when creating your logo.
Individual elements should be selected in a way that highlights that personality, and the overall effect when those elements are combined should be harmonious with the rest of your branding, not to mention the goals and values of the brand.
Uniqueness
There are thousands of logos in existence — too many to count! Even if you were to just look at the logos of your competition, you would have plenty of research to analyze.
That presents a challenge for graphic designers — ensuring that your logo is truly unique.
Adding to the challenge is the fact that logo design tends to run on trends. And trends aren’t always a bad thing — they may be more likely to catch the eye, or better identify a company as belonging to a certain niche or market. But don’t jump on a bandwagon just for the sake of following a trend.
Conduct market research and analyze your competitors to ensure that your logo isn’t a copycat, which could lead to loss of business.
Memorability
Piggy-backing on the characteristic of uniqueness is that of memorability. The more your logo stands out from the crowd, the more likely it is to be memorable.
But that isn’t the only point to consider. Another large factor is the simplicity of your logo.
Simple graphic design is often seen as more aesthetically pleasing, and it’s true that we tend to be drawn to simple designs. Complicated designs with too many elements, especially if those elements clash, gives us too much to process and is more likely to turn your viewer away before your logo has finished delivering its message.
As you put your design together, consider whether it could be easily drawn out from memory. The simpler it is, the easier it will be to remember — and the easier it is to remember, the more effective it will be for your brand.
Versatility
A final key characteristic that your logo must possess is versatility. It must be able to be used in a variety of circumstances, on a variety of backgrounds, in a variety of sizes. Take this logo of Cash for Used Laptop from their website for instance. It looks great in both black and white, as well as colored, without compromising on brand memorability.
It’s going to show up on your website, in marketing, and maybe even on smartphones, if mobile app development is part of your company growth plan.
That means that you should do the following:
- Ensure that your logo is in vector format, so it can be resized as necessary without losing clarity and quality.
- Test your logo out with different colors, such as in black and white and with a limited palette.
- Add a border to the design to make sure that your logo shows up well regardless of the background.
- Develop a few different variations on design, such as a super-simplified version, for use as necessary.
Logo design isn’t all about the color, font, and graphic. There are bigger considerations at stake, even though those elements all play a part. In the end, if you make sure that your logo has the five characteristics we’ve discussed here, you’ll design a logo that works well for your brand, and helps your company continue to grow.
About Hailey Anne
Embracing the work and travel paradigm wholeheartedly, Hailey likes to write while she’s exploring the world’s destinations. She ghost writes for her clients in the night and enjoy new cities by day. Connect with her for freelance writing projects on Twitter at https://twitter.com/bloggertrumps.
