5 Things to Keep in Mind When Designing Your Business Logo Share: Distillery Date Published 10 April 2019 Categories Blog Reading Time 5-Minute Read Your logo gives you an identity and sets you apart from the competition. Learn why research, story, simplicity, intrigue, and responsiveness are crucial. You have only one chance to make a first impression when someone visits your business’ website. Your logo is one of the first things visitors see. That’s exactly why a well-designed logo is always the result of significant effort, time, and the brainstorming of multiple creative, strategic, and business-focused minds. When designing your logo, you should pay close attention from the very first step in the design process. After all, your logo says a lot about your business. It should be designed with extraordinary care. Also, changing your logo in the future can be a costly endeavor. To get better results with your logo design, keep in mind these five simple but crucial guidelines: Do Your Research Create a Story Keep It Simple Get Their Attention Make It Responsive 1. Do Your Research In a world where there are no new ideas — only new interpretations — a brand’s logo needs to be fresh and unique to stand out. That’s why you need to do your research. Your logo is an opportunity to distinguish your business from companies offering similar products or services. Research the logos of your competitors, and make sure your logo stands out from the logos of your rivals. It’s also critical to get clear on who your audience is. What imagery, colors, or concepts will appeal to your audience? What do you want this audience to see when they think about your company or brand? Many buying decisions are emotional. When you want consumers to feel a deep emotional connection with a product or service, branding with a well-formulated ideology is important. Typically, advertising does this by telling stories that people associate with visual images of the company. Your logo is a central part of this story. 2. Create a Story Every business has a story behind their logo — or if they don’t, they create one. (We posted a short video which tells the story of our name and logo here!) It’s difficult to earn the trust of potential customers and to make them believe in your company’s ideology. To accomplish such a challenge, your logo needs to be recognizable. And it needs to tell a story. Your logo gives you an identity. It can be instrumental in convincing your target audience to try your product or service. When people see logos they recognize, they are immediately reminded of the stories of the businesses those logos represent. Take McDonald’s for example, whose iconic Golden Arches convey the story of the brand. Or look at logos for big, well-established brands like Mercedes-Benz, Walt Disney, DreamWorks Animation, Amazon, Facebook, or Instagram. Their logos are enough to help people recognize them, even without being accompanied by the full name of their businesses. 3. Keep It Simple If your logo is easy to spot, remember, and replicate, you’re on the right track. Picture the Nike Swoosh and Adidas’ three stripes. What do they have in common? They’re both simple yet unique enough to stick in your mind. Unfortunately, achieving this simplicity and originality is increasingly difficult. In today’s digital age, thousands of businesses are invented and advertised every day. Every business swims against the tides of massive flows of information. If the shape of your logo is both unique and clear, it has a better chance of being recognized. 4. Get Their Attention The best logos are often ambiguous and intriguing. It’s another way they stand out from other logos. Some people think that a logo should literally represent a product or service. In fact, that’s not a good strategy. No one should look at your logo and know exactly what your company does. The goal of your logo is to draw attention to your business or product. And the bottom line is that people love puzzles, novelty, and intrigue. If you can get people to look at your logo longer, their memories of it will become more meaningful. Take IBM’s popular “Eye-Bee-M” puzzle, which draws people in while subtly conveying their “THINK” motto. Or LG’s corporate logo, which stands for so much more than their product offerings. 5. Make It Responsive Nowadays, businesses have a wide range of opportunities for promoting their brands. Thanks to the progress of modern technology, we have the internet, smartphones, laptops, big screens, and small screens of countless types. This incredible diversity of platforms requires a special approach to your logo because it will appear in many different sizes and formats. Keep this in mind when designing your logo. Your logo must maintain a clear, distinctive appearance at any size, whether scaled down or blown up. Look how Chanel uses variations of its iconic interlocking Cs to create logos that are usable in any size or configuration of media. Your logo is an opportunity that shouldn’t be wasted. By keeping in mind these five simple guidelines, you’ll have a much better chance of creating a logo that will get you noticed — and remembered. Need help creating a distinctive, original, and intriguing logo that will help your business or product stand out from the crowd? Let us know! Distillery’s top-notch design team creates logos and animations that help brands make lasting impressions.