WHAT'S IN A LOGO?
Your logo is the “face” of your company and the main brand mark associated with your products or services. Other than your company name, it’s your most important branding asset. The consistent use of your logo forms your brand in the minds of customers who associate their experience with this design.
DISCOVERING YOUR BRAND
A good logo needs to hold a balance of simplicity and well-presented meaning, all while being visually unique. It should be easy to spot from a distance with clear typography for the company name and some aspect should be captured with color or symbolism.
Areas to consider:
The first step to logo design is discovering who you are. What is your purpose? Who is your audience? What personality does your brand have? These are questions that determine your messaging and style, including your logo. To find the purpose, think beyond your products and services and ask, “How does my business help people?”. Try to write your purpose in eight words or less. This will help you focus what the business is about and who your target audience is. The more focused, the easier it will be to create a strong logo for your brand.
Your branding is how people perceive you in the marketplace, and that perception helps them decide if you are the right fit for them. If you are marketing to millennials, then you need to speak their language and have a visual style they can relate to, and the same goes if you are marketing to baby boomers. Look at industry data and your own customer information and research to find some hints on who your target audience is. The more you know about your target audience the better you can use visual design and messaging to appeal to them.
Just like people, brands have personality and style. A sports brand might be high energy and confident in their messaging, while a real estate company might be more serious with their visuals and wording. To discover your brand, imagine it as a person. How would they dress? What music would they listen to? How do they talk? What is their personality like? How old are they? Usually your brand’s personality matches the personality of your ideal customer. Think about who your target audience is to find out some clues about what your branding should be like.
COLOR PSYCHOLOGY
Have you ever noticed a shift in your attitude while surrounded by a particular color? When you create a logo one of the biggest decisions is selecting your brand’s colors. Picking the right palette helps establish your identity better and adds versatility to your designs. Color psychology teaches us that much of human behavior is dictated by color. It influences our thinking, inspires our decision-making, and impacts our mood.
SHAPE PSYCHOLOGY
All logos, should they include an icon and text, only an icon, or just text, have a shape.
It’s essential to consider what that logo design shape communicates about your brand. Understanding the psychology of shapes gives you the upper hand when designing a logo. By working with the subconscious meaning behind each shape, you’ll better communicate your brand and set the right foundation for your logo.
Typography in the logo and branding world is more than just picking a pretty font. Choosing a proper typeface for your logo influences the viewer decisions subconsciously. Furthermore, an excellent typeface can create a solid visual hierarchy, compliment the graphical balance, and be the centerpiece of the design.
You can find that a dedicated typography strategy aims to either create a unique branding, empower a user experience, or influence people through an emotion or direct attention.
FONT PSYCHOLOGY
Fonts are visual elements used to pass information or display a message to the viewer. Like with every visual input, fonts also carry a hidden message that changes how the viewer perceives the logo and branding regardless of the content itself.
Fonts come in many variations with very different psychological traits.
MAPPING TO CONCEPT
You know the saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words”?
Well, what if that picture was of a thousand words?
That is the general idea of word mapping. Taking the central idea or word(s) of a business, then branching out to show how that idea or word can connect to another. This is extremely useful when exploring a logo or brand design and can get the concept ideas flowing.
TYPES OF LOGOS
Though they’re all a combination of typography and images, each type of logo gives your brand a different feel. Since your logo is the first thing new customers will see, you want to make sure you get it right.
While a great logo combines many elements – font, images, color palette, etc.), these elements will only make a cohesive balance if you are clear about the type of logo you want to create.
