Making A Logo That Works

There’s a great deal more to crafting a brand’s visual identity than just placing a name in a square and calling it a day. A logo is typically a company’s first impression in a potential customer’s head, one that can impact brand perception, purchase decisions and overall attitude toward the product or service on offer. And indeed, we live in a society plastered with logos. Even toddlers can readily recognize many logos, or are able to understand what a company sells just by looking at its logo.

A logo helps distinguish a brand from its competitors by making its image stand out from the rest. However, creating a unique design isn’t necessarily about avoiding imitation, but also about designing something out-of-the-box. It’s tempting to just toss a generic industry icon on the page, but it’s far more important to think creatively. A logo is an image, but it’s also an introduction to a brand. The logo must reach a specific audience, and figuring out visual and verbal associations with them is a necessity, often in the form of words or mood boards. However, the aesthetic associations must not come at the expense of the deeper meaning of the brand. Is the brand utility-driven or is it more focused on evoking emotion? Is it contemporary or quirky? What does the customer care about, and what does the brand aspire to be? While it is helpful to stay up to date on design trends, it’s far more vital to stay true to a brand’s overarching personality.

Every logo has a kind of a history, filled with meaning and purpose. When taking the brand’s personality into account, you have to think about every aspect of its image. Bright and bold colors may grab someone’s attention, but could also seem brash. Muted tones emit an aura of sophistication, but can be easily overlooked. Every color has a different implication and can bring nuance to your message — don’t fall into the trap of conveying the wrong message because of a simple brush stroke.

Whether a brand can use a wordmark or logotype depends on the uniqueness of its name. Less common-sounding names can be denoted easily through typography instead of visual images. When making logotypes, gimmicky fonts should be avoided, and readability should be prioritized. Negative space or simple visual tweaks can be used to add a touch of sophistication and/or quirkiness to denote the personality of the brand cleverly, and thus set it apart through its logo.

It is also very important to make a logo visually scalable and versatile, so that it can appear on anything analog or digital at any size. This can be achieved effectively through the use of recognizable and unique shapes and/or logotypes that can be distinguished even from a distance.

Lastly, it’s important to be patient and not rush a design. We at Felicity believe time equals money, but we also believe that the time we put in behind a design, for a logo or otherwise, is well worth the money our client spends on it.