What is a Logo?

The elements of a logo involve color, shape, images, and text that work together and with the rest of your brand identity to get you noticed, remembered, and increase sales. Can you imagine buying an Apple or a Nike product without the distinctive logo? Part of the selling power of a favored logo is that the customer buys the goods because the logo demonstrates their brand image to their family, friends, work colleagues, and followers on social media. This tribal loyalty (some describe it as cultish) to a brand is the reason why damaging your brand by bad publicity in connection with your values can destroy sales.

Branding is the creation of a picture in a person’s mind of:

Branding is about personality and emotion as people interact with your brand and build up a mental image of what buying your brand says about them and their lifestyle. People who avoid buying certain brands are also showing an emotional response to brand image. The logo is one of the visual clues that people associate with the brand and is a vital first blink impression. But the logo is not the brand any more than the colors used in the stores or staff uniforms are the brand. These are indicators of the brand, but the brand itself is an intangible thought creation in the mind of the audience.

Brand identity is a creation intended to display a brand image to the world, and it covers all the ways a business presents itself:

• Name
• Logo
• Colors
• Shapes
• Advertising
• Language
• Staff behavior

The combination of these factors in product design and presentation, websites, stores, offices, and communications create the logo brand design package. The brand establishes as a “person” in the publics’ eyes with character traits and attitudes. A successful brand image appealing to consumers results in better sales with less expense on marketing because the brand followers are predisposed to buy the products or the service. A strong business brand identity is an intangible business asset that impacts on profitability. The value of a brand is assessed by comparing profitability to a similar but poorly branded competing business or the equivalent cost to gain the same market share as the brand leader. Brand values can run into millions for top performers. Designing a brand identity requires a focus on the business goals and that target audience of that business. No brand can appeal to every person on the planet. The best results come from focusing on the profitable target audience. The company message needs to be consistent down to the corporate colors in the office and the shapes in advertising and packaging. Every element of a company needs to reinforce the image of its brand. Observers identify it as unique and separate from the competition. Before you can think about logo development, you need to know who you are in terms of mission, values, and personality. Companies and the logo that identifies them are shaped by what they want to do and how they want to achieve it. People don’t interact with businesses – they interact with brands; brands take on a unique identification in the public domain, and customers choose brand identities that share the same traits and personality as themselves. Or display qualities they aspire to achieve.

There are anecdotal stories of a business owner scrawling a Picasso style doodle on paper, and this becoming an iconic logo.  The artistic business owner may have the inspiration for their logo, but they will still run it past a professional to shape and solidify the design. Most business owners have a passion for their business idea – their reason and purpose for starting the company. All businesspeople acquire many hats and several additional skills. All successful businesses quickly learn the art of focusing on their abilities and buying in or outsourcing the others. Logo design and defining a brand identity is one of those areas that benefit from buying in a professional web design agency. You live and breathe your business; you know what you do; professional logo branding services can reflect your business values and brand identity. A professional logo designer can help you see your business in a different light.

You save time by cutting out the learning cycle as a professional logo designer comes to you knowing how to do the customer and industry research you need to establish your brand in the marketplace. Additionally, a professional designer has access and familiarity with the tools and process of putting together a portfolio of potential logo designs.  You get a quick turnaround of possible logo designs in different colors, shapes, and motifs.  You can concentrate on what your logo means rather than struggling to draw it in n acceptable format.

A professional designer can go back to the drawing board and improve or redesign the logo. They have a less emotional attachment to the company logo and can bring an outsider’s perspective.  They also bring an aesthetic sense of what elements work together. A professional designer can collect honest feedback from staff and customers on their reactions to the proposed logo and redraw to accommodate these rather than canvassing for their preferred design.

The benefit of skills and experience gained through designing hundreds of logos and training in design principles is the main reason why you would invest in a professional logo designer. A professional with years of experience has seen trends come and go, and they are more in tune with the needs of the business to have a logo that captures their business ethos. Plus, the quality of the digital design will meet industry standards and be in the right format for all your applications.

Logo design is a process rather than a straight artwork commission because the logo must be the visible face of your brand. Before any creative designer can sit down and create a logo, they need to get to know your business and, more importantly, your customers – past, present, and future.

Why do you want a logo?

It may seem obvious why you need a logo – every brand needs a logo for customers to identify the business. The question is, why do you want a logo? That is different – what are your motivations, what do you expect the logo to say about you, and what is your goal.

What is the brand?

A brand has a personality and a voice. For example, one chocolate producer will be high-end luxurious artisan chocolates with unique flavors, and another produces no-nonsense chocolate bars in milk and plain. They are aiming at different markets, and they speak with different voices – because the brand speaks the language of the target audience.

What makes you special?

Your unique approach to your business means you are different from your competitors, because if you were the same, then there is no point in your customers buying from you and not them. Big stores may sell the same range of products, but they have their loyal customers who shop with them for that extra something that distinguishes them from the competition. The thing that makes your business unique in your customers’ eyes. Capturing an element of your special qualities in your logo design makes it more relevant to your audience.

Where did you come from?

Even a brand-new business was born from an idea in its founder’s mind and has a history. Most logos have a hint of the history of the company, the founders, or the products. The business name normally has a story because people are always telling a narrative with the clothes they wear, the food they eat, and the names they give their products, children, and businesses. After gathering initial thoughts and impressions, it’s time to move on to the formal process.

The company values and goals define the brand personality, and you express this personality in the logo design. You can see implied company values from the way a business treats its staff and customers – these are the values in action. The best way of getting at these core values is to survey the staff and the customers to find out what they think the company stands by and wants to achieve.

Not every company has the same values or ways of engaging with customers -nor should they, because different audiences want to interact in different ways. Designing a logo that reflects a brands personality means framing the brand as if it were a person with character traits:

• Friendly or slightly aloof?
• Luxury or bargain basement?
• Quality products or disposable?

Customers choose brands that reflect their values, so the customers’ values become the brand values in a chicken and egg puzzle. Until you know the values and goals, it is difficult to design a logo to reflect the brand personality.

The logo needs to stand out from the competition but also reflect the industry standards.  By researching what the industry does and how the competition behaves and markets their products, you get an impression of industry standards for logos:

By knowing what everyone else in your niche industry is doing, you can decide:

• To follow the herd because experience shows these logos are expected and work for the customer; or
• Stand out from the crowd by being clearly different from all the other businesses to get noticed.

The best path depends on your business goals and how your logo choices can push you forward to achieve your strategy.

Web logo design service still works with pencil and paper to brainstorm some initial ideas taking what they know about the company, staff, and customers as inspiration, to see what presents itself.  The initial doodles and sketches then convert to digital files for manipulation. The logo draft designs are the place to experiment with different colors, shapes, text, and arrangements to see what works as a cohesive logo design that works aesthetically and for telling the brand story.

The final development stage is a mixture of presenting ideas to the buyer (the business paying for the logo) and gaining customer feedback. A successful logo must appeal to the target audience – to suit a mass of people, rather than appealing exclusively to the business owners. A hotel decorates its rooms with its guests in mind rather than to the hotel owner’s personal taste. The owner influences the decision, but to achieve business goals (sell more rooms), you need to please the customer, first. The final development stage includes seeking customer and staff opinions on the logo. The difficulty with selecting the best logo is that an emotional response to a logo needs interaction with the brand – this is not possible with the design stage. The customer feedback will weed out undesirable logos that hurt customer perception ss.

A logo communicates your brand identity and message to its audience. To be effective, a logo is:

Other considerations about logo design are the affordability and practicality of the design. A busy web logo design with multiple colors is going to cost more than one or two colors when printing brochures, marketing material, and other corporate printed items like corporate uniforms.

A simple, clean design with one or two colors and defined shapes is better at all sizes and formats than a design with multiple colors and complex shapes.  Most people retain the memory of a simple logo design compared with a complex, multilayered one.

Essentially a great logo design tells your target audience who you are within a few seconds of seeing it. It is memorable, appealing, and reinforces your brand identity in line with your values.

The Nike logo evolution * The Nike logo is a trademark of Nike, Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries.

Logos do not need to be literal depictions of the business to be successful – a logo’s success reflects the brand identity and reach. If the brand is successful, the logo is also thriving.

The apple logo and brand are practically synonymous. The apple logo is clean, simple, and has an iconic status. It also has a history – known to those in the computing field that gives it a bittersweet feeling.

When you are looking for a logo design company, consider the following factors:

Experience

An excellent logo design company has a track record with a portfolio of previously completed designs. You can expect to see case studies and testimonials.  You can follow up on the testimonials to get a feel for how easy the design company is to work with and how they satisfy the client’s expectations.

Process

As part of the pitch for your business, you can expect an outline of the process the design company will apply in collecting information, researching your brand, and designing the artwork for your logo.

Publicity

Look at how the logo design company appears on social media – have they won awards, are they thought leaders in their field? It’s not a complete indicator of expertise, but it helps to indicate the quality of the company. Also, look for membership of professional bodies.

Portfolio

You can gauge the experience and quality of the web logo design service from the volume of logos in their portfolio. Primarily check the proportion of real logos (in use by brands) to practice logos.  Another factor is the quality of logos, as opposed to the quantity.

In the portfolio, you expect to see a range of logo styles indicating that each client gets a unique, carefully designed logo for their needs.

Timeframe

Everyone is in a hurry to get work done now, or yesterday, but your logo is an investment in your brand image – a quickly scribbled doodle may not be what you need to grow with the company. A too short time frame is not ideal – expect between four to fifteen days as a turnaround service.

Budget

Budget matters in business but be careful to price for the quality and not the lowest cost. A logo is a business asset, and the purchasing decision needs to follow the same process of specification and value for money. A good logo design company will give an excellent budget breakdown to make it clear that you are getting value for money.

Communication

You can learn a lot about logo branding services by the way the company pitches for your business, the presentation, the contract, and how ready they are to ask plenty of questions. Logo design involves getting to know your business in detail through researching and collecting information at every opportunity.

The right logo design company for you and your brand will be a team that you can talk to and who can appreciate your business goals and values.