What makes a great logo design? It’s simple right? A designer just puts the brand name in a box and calls it a day right? Wrong. There is so much more to designing a great logo design than what the average person thinks.
I often get asked when designing a logo if it will be ready within a couple of days. Unfortunately, the answer is no. A great logo design takes time, and a lot of thought. Here is the logo design process and some tips to great logo design.
The Process
1. Research the audience and competitors.
A logo is often a company’s first impression, one that can impact a customer’s brand perception, purchase decisions and overall attitude towards a product. For this reason, it is absolutely vital to understand the audience that the logo is going to appeal to. The designer must fully understand both the target market and the business to deliver a quality product.
2. Initial Logo Design Concepts
After research comes the initial logo design concepts. This step involves sketching every design that comes to mind, whether it’s good or bad. These designs must be unique and should avoid cliches. It’s very easy for a designer to see something they like, replicate it and just change some colours here or there. This is not only ethically wrong but also illegal. They will also almost definitely get caught.
3. Logo Design Refinement
Once the designer is happy with their initial logo design concepts. They will choose a few to refine further. These logo designs will be respectful to the company and will be the most appealing to the target market.
4. Logo Design Development
This is the stage that turns a sketch into a digital form, the stage that really sees the logo come to life.
5. Logo Design Presentation & Revision
After the logo design has been developed, it is time to present it to the client. In most cases, the client is happy with the design however, we like most other designers offer 2 revisions to the logo design. So if the client isn’t happy with the design for some reason, they will be after the revision has been made.
6. Delivery
Once the final logo has been decided upon it will be delivered in a few different formats for ease of use for the client. These formats include .ai, .eps, .jpg, .png & a file size that has been scaled to Facebook’s profile photo dimensions.
Now that you know the process of a logo design, it’s time to explain what exactly makes a logo design great.
1. Keep it simple
A great logo design is not overly complex. A simple logo design is easily recognisable and allows it to be memorable.
2. It must be memorable
The point of a logo is brand recognition, for that reason a great logo must be memorable. This works hand in hand with designing simply and appropriately.
3. Design timelessly
An effective logo should be timeless. There are always design trends which are good to follow, but you have to think in the long run, will this trend still be appropriate and useable in 10, 20, even 50 years? If the answer is no, you may need to re-assess the design.
4. Versatile
A great logo is designed with versatility in mind. It should be designed in vector format so that it can easily be resized and scaled to any size. It should also be able to be applied on both light and dark backgrounds and used in horizontal and vertical formats.
5. Design appropriately
This comes back to researching the target market and knowing the audience whom this logo is to appeal to. For example, you wouldn’t use a childish font for a tax accountant logo, but you would use one for a toy store.
If you need any more tips on logo design or would like an assessment on your current logo design get in touch.
