McDonald’s, Apple, Mercedes, Starbucks, Pepsi, Nike, and Coca-Cola. What do these legendary brands have in common?
A killer logo, that’s what. The golden arches of the world’s largest fast-food chain and the iconic Nike swoosh are as synonymous with the brand as the companies themselves.
The logo is the front door of your business, a first impression and only representation of your company that a potential client has before learning more. You only get one chance to make a great first impression!
Introduction To Logo Design
Successful brands have logos that reflect the company’s values and are instantly recognisable. Timeless and effective, a killer logo will work at any size and anywhere.
Logo design might seem insignificant to some, but nothing could be further from the truth. A stunning, impactful logo can offer substantial benefits to companies, attracting the interest of potential customers and differentiating your brand from the competitors.
Logos convey the brand’s essence and can provide instant recognition, influencing prospects and investors into seeing your brand a particular way.
In addition, it is a universal communication tool that appears on products, printed material, reports, business cards, and electronic communication.
This graphic may be the symbol, emblem, or any particular mark indicating the subject. Logo designing started in the 1870s.
Over the years, Modernism gave a further push to graphic designers, emphasizing the value of “less is more.” The importance of logos has grown to heights in recent times.
What Is A Logo?
At the very rudimentary level, logos are symbols that consist of text, images, or a combination of both that represent your brand.
A good logo will represent your brand in a favourable light, while a great logo will be the cornerstone of your brand.
Logos can be descriptive or non-descriptive. Descriptive logos include visual or textual elements that indicate the type of product or service a company offers.
Examples of descriptive logos include Burger King and Dunkin Donuts.
Non-descriptive logos give no indication of what the company is about or the products or services it offers. Think McDonald’s, Nike, and Mercedes!
Although these legendary logos are elegant, timeless, and instantly recognisable, there was a time when no one knew what the business was about.
Companies often update their logos to reflect on changing trends. In recent months, General Motors, Pfizer, Burger King, and Renault have joined the rest of the major brands giving their logo a facelift.
What Does A Logo Do?
Logos are a critical component of branding, sitting at the frontlines of your business facing your prospects, investors, and customers.
Competition – Logos make you stand out from your competition, giving your business a unique brand mark.
Conveys information – As mentioned before, descriptive logos will depict an accurate representation of your company’s offerings of products and services. Non-descriptive logos will not, but often belong to significant companies with established brands.
Brand recognition – A logo creates a powerful visual association with the business, helping your customers keep your brand in mind. A critical part of brand identity, top logos are so omnipresent that they are instantly recognised.
Logos should be used consistently throughout your business materials. Try using the same size logo across all digital platforms, don’t change its size between web pages if there isn’t a need.
While it might be tempting to plaster your new, snazzy logo all over your business, don’t! It is all well to subtly place them to optimize brand awareness, but screaming it constantly is likely to do more harm than good and might cheapen its value.
Standard placements for logos can include:
- Advertisements, brochures, flyers, banners, and other marketing materials
- Signs
- Business cards
- Corporate gifts such as coffee mugs, water bottles, pens, and writing pads
- Digital and social media
- Presentations
- Office decor
- Business profiles
What Is Logo Design?
Logo design is all about creating the perfect visual brand mark for a company. Depending on the type, a logo can consist of:
Typography – Unless you are as renowned as Nike or Mercedes, a logo will contain some kind of text, usually your business name. Once your brand recognition is high enough, you may decide to drop the text and use an icon only, like Apple.
Image – Some logos like Starbucks come with symbols and icons that can be composed of shapes and other geometric features.
Colours – Colours are a subjective choice that can mean several things to different individuals. Often, simple colours are excellent representations of your business, like a blue logo for a beach resort or the ubiquitous green of eco-friendly or sustainable businesses.
A logo is a critical part of your branding strategy and one of the most crucial areas of graphic design.
Having a recognisable brand is vital in this day and age, where we are constantly bombarded with messaging and stimulation from companies trying to grab our attention.
Who Needs a Logo Anyway?
With the boom of industries and companies, it becomes very difficult to stand out in the pool of competitors. At such a crucial point, branding makes a brand or company stand out among others.
The company logo forms an essential part of branding as it’s the graphic design that first drags the audience’s eyes.
Today, every company, brand, and individual needs a logo irrespective of its size. For a brand to establish itself, it needs to first stand out visually in the eyes of its target audience.
Importance Of A Logo
The importance of logos in today’s world is incomparable. It is a crucial part of branding and plays an essential role in the frontline of your company’s image.
Logos initiates visual communication
A symbol appeals to the human senses more than any other form of expression. Symbols trigger our emotions and experiences, forcing the mind to take action.
Likewise, a logo initiates the first visual communication between the business and the audience.
It gives them an overview of the services or the business’s niche.
Logo helps in the creation of social identity
Political candidates start their journey with a few local people, whom they term as their “supporters.” Whenever they propagate about their presence and motto, the belief of their supporters and their audience increases which helps them increase their support base.
Logos are no different. Repetition of the same visual image helps the people create a memory of the brand. In addition, you need a logo to make yourself stand as an identity in social media amongst your competitors.
The pictorial icons create an imprint in the audience’s minds, which helps them remember about you and your company.
Logos Are Key To Branding
A good logo adds spirit and soul to your business, helping your prospects distinguish you from others. Companies with classy, professional logos have such an imprint in the readers’ minds that they can achieve top-of-mind awareness above and beyond their competitors.
Elements Of A Logo
Before designing a logo, ensure you know your target audience and aim to communicate directly with them with a clear, succinct message. 5 basic elements of a logo are:
- Simplicity
- Relevance
- Versatility
- Uniqueness
- Memorable
Simplicity
When it comes to logos, less can be more. The pure simplicity of powerful logos like Nike, McDonalds and Mercedes speaks volumes over complex images.
Relevance
The logo represents your brand and the services you offer, so before adding superfluous information in the form of text and images, ask yourself “Why?”, “Why this image?”, “What relevance does it have with my business?”
Secondly, look at the logo from the audience’s point of view. One man’s meat is another man’s poison, so take into consideration the tastes and preferences of your audience and leave your own behind.
Things that are appealing to you are not necessarily the general public’s taste.
Versatility
A logo is a multi-faceted tool that is used on numerous surfaces. Beyond the welcome sign, letterheads and billboards, a logo might have to fit on small spaces such as a pen.
Uniqueness
Researching before designing your logo is good because it lends inspiration and ideas. Avoid taking up all the ideas and creating a logo that looks like a mixture of ideas from other businesses.
In order to stand out in the pool of competitors, you need a logo that’s not default or predictable.
Memorable
For a logo to be memorable, simple, stylish, and elegant. Complex logos are difficult to remember, so design your logo boldly with simple colors and images.
How To Choose The Right Logo?
People have a common tendency to judge things from their appearance and impression at first glance. You only get one chance to make a first impression, so make logo design an essential part of developing your company’s personality and voice.
Before choosing a logo design, keep in mind:
- Your logo is likely the first thing a prospect or customer will see
- The logo should reflect your business goals and plays an essential role in your brand’s identity.
- The logo should be adaptable to all the needs of the brand.
- Follow various inspirations for having an idea about what your logo should look like.
- Look at the logos of your closest competitors and outdo them.
- Browse through various design styles and choose the perfect typography, colors, icons, graphics, and shapes for your logo.
- With all your design elements properly set, you need to choose your logotype. The most common types of logos are monograms, wordmarks, logo symbols, abstract logo marks, mascots, combination marks, and emblems.
- With all these elements, style and typography perfectly decided, you can craft a simple, elegant logo for your brand.
Small Business Logo Design – Why It Is Important
The little guys have it rough competing with the big dogs. Smaller companies rely on customer loyalty and a unique brand image way more than giant corporations.
Studies have shown that 93% of consumers base their purchasing decisions on visual perception. Logos help with just that. They create an emotional connection right from the get-go and help a small business stand out in the audience’s mind.
Gym Logo Design
The fitness industry is flourishing with the growth and emergence of gyms in every corner of a city.
Gyms need proper branding and marketing techniques to create a niche and stand out amongst a pool of fitness businesses. An eye-catching graphic will help a gym stand out and stay foremost in the mind of the prospects and customers.
A gym company logo sets the first impression in the minds of your audience. For a fitness company, the ideal and simple logo can include fitness equipment or a fit body image.
In addition, strong, bold fonts can be used to convey ruggedness and further supports the concept of fitness.
Campbell Health and Fitness Center used simple images and colors to create a professional and sophisticated logo of the brand. Similarly, the logo of Carlos Got Fit is the perfect example of a descriptive logo that clearly depicts that this is the place for fitness boot camps.
Dumbbells, muscles, and flexing are all images that represent a gym business. Where possible, avoid clichés. Use that imagery in a clever way to stand out. Remember to try connect with your audience.
Jewellery Logo Design
Jewellery businesses demand high-class branding where design elements play the crucial role during logo formation. Stylish sophistication is the name of the game when it comes to the jewellery business.
Design elements can be combined to convey a clean, refined look while in the world of graphic designing, these subtle, straightforward elements actually give a classy long-lasting impression.
While designing a premium logo for your jewellery brand, you might want to be careful with the font type. Calligraphic fonts symbolize sophistication and elegance, while modern fonts such as sans serifs symbolize lavishness.
In addition, serif fonts containing thick and thin strokes in alternating patterns can also look classy. Blending these three types of fonts or creating a customized font would be an excellent complement to your logo.
Besides luxury, customized fonts also impart uniqueness to your logo. Minimal shapes and lines in the right color and amount are all you need to craft an impressive logo.
Avoid the use of many elements. A high-end classy jewellery brand’s display usually avoids being overcrowded and overwhelming, and strives for simplicity and style.
In addition, a good amount of white or blank space in the logo has also been known to symbolize prestige and brings a higher-end look to its elements.
When choosing colours for your logo, consider your target audience. Youths tend to favor soft colours while adults might prefer contrasting hues and bold combinations.
Designs with lines and borders can look subtle and luxurious. Textures and other small detailings such as metallic textures can make the logo look simple and classy at once.
In addition, embossing or die-cuts can bring a glamorous look to the logo.
Architecture Logo Design
Appearance is everything in the world of architecture. An architect understands how crucial it is to balance functionality and visual appeal.
Just like a building or structure catches an audience’s attention at first glance, the logo of an architecture business should convey its dedication to art and visual imagery.
Architects know how important precision is. An architect’s logo is a way to showcase the skill and style that goes into the company’s work, laying a foundation that will take the business to new heights.
Architect logos should be kept minimal and powerful. Precision and attention to detail are the universal language of builders and architects alike.
Bakery Logo Design
Designing your own bakery logo is a piece of cake! Pun fully intended!
When you’re selling bread, pies, or other delicious treats, the right combination of fonts, colours and icons will have your customers pounding on your doors.
Pull people off the streets and into your bakery with a striking logo design. The UK has 2,500 commercial bakeries, all using images of cupcakes, snacks, bakers, and utensils to convey a cosy, comfortable feel to customers.
When selecting colours for bakery logos, natural, pastel colours work best, while vibrant hues like pink and orange can appear tempting and appetizing.
Bakery logos at times are paired well with a mouth-watering tagline. Using an icon isn’t a must, but an icon remains an easy way to convey your bakery’s main product. Is your signature product a donut, cupcake, or pie?
And does your bakery follow a particular style of baking like Italian or French? Your logo should show off your mad baking skills and set you apart from the competition.
Wedding Logo Design
While not technically a business, a wedding logo can help immortalize the most special day of your life.
A unique wedding logo adds an excellent personal touch to decorations, invitations, keepsakes, and photo albums. Wedding logos can include stylish, cute names derived from the combination of the wedding couple’s initials, or any other font relevant to the couple.
Wedding logos light up the ambiance, adding more fun and excitement into an important day. A logo plays a crucial role in themed weddings right down to the food menu and backdrop decorations.
Calligraphy has the potential to suit every theme and decor idea, bringing a modern, floral touch to existing decorations and designs.
Barber Logo Design
Of course, the obvious icons that a barber shop uses would include razors, mustaches, or a pair of scissors.
The best fonts for a barbershop logo include Calibri, Clarendon, Helvetica, and Candida.
In addition, sans serif fonts explicitly represent modernized sophistication and are best for salons and barbershops with high-end fashion.
The colours ideal for barbershops include black, red, white, and blue. While the combination of white and black symbolizes elegance, bright colours imply boldness and creativity.
A maximum of two colours are recommended to keep things simple. More colours eat up the space, and may create a logo that looks “noisy” or messy.
Simplicity makes the logo look more premium yet still can convey a barbershop’s primary function and business.
Clothing Brands
No industry loves visual appeal more than the fashion industry. The industry goes way more by the perceived value of external appearance than by any product’s true worth of value.
Similarly, a fashion business is prized by how it presents itself before its audience. No matter how many quality pieces you have in the store, people won’t come in if they don’t like the store’s visual appeal.
While visual appearance becomes extremely crucial for clothing brands and companies, logos, in this case, become indispensable.
Fashion brand logos don’t have to be complicated. Good examples of fashion brands with simple, yet easily recognizable logos include H&M, Louis Vuitton, Hermes, Adidas, Tiffany & Co., Chanel, and Prada.
Beauty Startups
Just like the eyes are the window to the soul, your logo delivers your brand message with similar honesty to your target audience. Like the fashion industry, the beauty industry is all about visual appeal.
A beauty startup will require a logo that is creative, elegant, and sophisticated, to appeal to the key target audience.
The simplicity of a design is directly proportional to the versatility. Consider the logos of:
- MAC Cosmetics
- Shiseido
- Revlon
- L’Oréal
- Estee Lauder
- Clinique
- Lancôme
- Maybelline
- Shiseido
- Fenty Beauty
- Olay
- Sephora
- CoverGirl
None of these top beauty brands have sophisticatedly designed logos. They simply convey their initials in bold colours, giving their logo a sophisticated, elegant look.
Street Food
The success stories of street foods aren’t a new thing. But how do the top street food sellers stand out amidst the tough competition, easily fading trends, stringent rules, and unpredictable weather conditions?
Most large fast food chains and restaurants started out as street food vendors. As their meteoric rise goes through the roof throughout the years, the opportunities are present for all street food vendors.
A logo for your street food stall will help customers identify your brand and differentiate you from the competition. Just like different spices add different flavours to the dish, tastes and recipes can be associated with your logo.
Retreat and Wellness
Retreat and wellness companies have become a safe haven for folks to escape from their hectic daily lives, recuperating and relaxing in preparation of what’s to come.
Yoga centres, spas, and wellness shops have been springing up all over the globe to help improve the mental and physical health of their customers.
Logos provide a face to the company, drawing attention to the brand and establishing a visual link between the business and the face of the company. When designing logos for a wellness business, conventional icons such as leaves or a person in a classic yoga pose can be used.
Gentle colours like pastels are favoured over bright, vibrant hues, symbolizing relationships, nutrition, safety, and growth.
Apples can symbolize nutrition, hands for relationships, and mountains for adventure and exploration.
Dropshipping Business
Dropshipping is a competitive business. A good logo will grant your customers instant recognition of your business and identify you easily.
Your logo is as crucial as your dropshipping source in the business. It is a representation of the business and brand awareness is important for any business, regardless of size.
As a dropshipper, your biggest brand loyalty contributor will be the service that you provide. You aren’t a manufacturer, so the brand loyalty to your service falls into part of your supply chain.
You might get away with a simple logo that represents your best practices in a visually appealing matter. Ensure the logo is optimized for web and easy to print, yet stands out in an image search if people are looking for your services.
Tradesman
Every company needs a logo, even a small tradesman business providing services like plumbing, electrician or roofing.
The logo sets an atmosphere for your potential customers to immediately identify your business and the services you provide. The obvious choices for plumbers are a plunger or sink, while handyman services can be communicated through hammers or other tools.
How To Pick A Logo Designer
Working with the perfect logo designer is half the battle won. The journey for a small business can be a stressful one. There are certain traits to look out for during your search for the perfect designer.
- Portfolio
Previous projects will give you an adequate idea of what skill level your designer is at, and what you can expect for future work. This isn’t to say that a new designer cannot produce top results, but an extensive portfolio is indicative of their experience.
Some designers have a specific style they like using while others can show that they can adapt to your own style and requirements.
Designers with a varied portfolio show that they can create logos based on their client’s business and audience.
- Design Process
What sort of process will your designer follow? A typical process involves crucial research on competitors and industry best practices, and does not take a day to develop.
While there is no typical time frame as each business will have varying needs, a rough guide for a logo design can take two to six weeks depending on the complexity of research needed and established brand guidelines for implementation.
- Font Licensing
Your designer should highlight font licensing, the same way stock images and photographs require a purchased license in order to use them.
Your designer may have to purchase a font license as part of the logo design. If a particular font has to be used in the logo, the cost of that font has to be added to the logo design feed.
If you do not want a licensed font to be used, this will limit the design drastically by cutting off a lot of professional level fonts.
Aside from the logo, additional licenses have to be purchased if you are using the logo on other areas of branding such as websites, letterheads and PDF documents.
Free fonts are already on your system and are of high quality. However, there are limited choices of free fonts and everyone is already using them. In addition, a lot of “free” fonts are only free for use personally, not commercially.
- Logo Guidelines
Your designer should be able to produce logo guidelines, in an event that you need to hand over your logo and brand guidelines to another designer. This service is often an optional extra.
After crafting the perfect logo for your business, the last thing you want is a new designer coming in and mucking it up.
That’s when style guidelines come in. The guidelines act as a handbook for your logo, informing about spacing, sizing, colour, typography and other details on what to do with the logo and what not to.
- Adaptability
Your logo design needs to be versatile to suit all surfaces, sizes and shapes. You certainly don’t want to squish your logo to fit a smaller surface area, nor crop off edges and lose parts of it.
Company logos are often used as profile photos on social media platforms and cropped to fit a square or round shape. Your designer should provide the logo in several different versions that you can use for a range of situations.
At the very minimum, you should a range of files types (the vector is crucial), colourway and icob sizes.
Kukoo Creative UK
At Kukoo Creative, we are a small team of dedicated designers whose mission is to provide beautiful, bespoke graphics for small businesses worldwide.
With international clients in Spain, China, Qatar, Bermuda and of course, the UK where we are based, we pride ourselves in being the best in customer care and dedication to excellence.
If you require a logo designer, we’d love to chat about what you stand to gain and how we can help improve your business.
Call today to speak to us on 0333 050 1245. Alternatively, send us your details online
here.
Final Thoughts
All great companies started as small businesses, even Amazon and Google. Branding begins the minute the company is formed, regardless of size.
Companies focus on branding as much as they ensure top-quality products will always have an upper hand over their competitors, even with a similar product. The logo is an essential part of a company’s brand image and a crucial component to its face.
By creating a snazzy, impactful logo that evolves over time, you’ll set the stage for many years to come.
