Hello to all you entrepreneurs and new business owners. It gives such a kick when someone calls you that, isn’t it? So I am here on my chair again thinking what advice I can give to all you people who are going to enter this world of business.
Often times when I work with the new owners or people who have just got into their own business, Only a few people have a clear idea of what matters when it comes to a good business branding. They do not care whether the logo concept that they have in mind is going to impact their business in a positive or negative way. And honestly, it isn’t their fault, I mean why would they think about that, to them it is just an image which is representing their business. It should just be good enough and obviously it should look pretty that is what matters to them.
But it is very impractical in the case of brand identity, a logo or brand identity is very important when it comes to your business’s success. It isn’t that time when in the old times business’s use to flourish without a great logo. I think those were the times when a good word into the market would do the wonders for you. It was not the time of cutthroat competition, and it was easy to survive. But now the story is very different every minute businesses are starting up in your space and everyone is fighting for the same thing that you are. Probably they have a big budget for their marketing and advertising. How in the world would you even get the chance to survive? You do not have enough investment to put into marketing and promotion of your brand it is going to make it hard enough for you to survive, by doing this to your branding you are doing worst to your business.
So, what exactly you should know before getting down this road of getting your logo designed. It is not the secret information that should be in reach of the brand experts and designers, this is something you should also know for your business’s sake.
Here are the things that you should keep in mind-
1. Be relevant
2. It is More than it looks
3. Avoid Cliches
4. Keep it Simple & Memorable
5. Make it timeless
6. Avoid subjective judgments
7. Choose the colour wisely
8. Should be scalable
9. Make it distinct
10. Should be versatile & Responsive
This is not everything but very basic information that as a businessman you should understand if you cannot hire a great branding expert who would make sure your branding is following good design principles and it has been designed with the best knowledge.
Now, we are going to dissect each point one by one.
Be relevant
The logo should feel relevant to your space or business in direct or the indirect way, by this I do not mean to design the logo how everyone else within your space is making but to make sure that at least people can relate your product or services to the logo, and if you want to take the chance and are willing to invest good amount in brand promotion than a logo which doesn’t look relevant but people would successfully associate the logo to your brand and space once it gets imprinted on their mind through marketing campaigns and promotion. This is a high-risk high reward situation but not everyone gets successful at this.
It is more than it looks
A logo isn’t just a thing of beauty but a visual to communicate well to your customers and clients. It holds power to make an impact on your target audience and even to get certain behaviors out of your customers.
Do not underestimate the power of a brand identity or a logo, it is capable of making or breaking a brand depends on whether it has been designed with a right strategy in mind or it is just designed to showcase a thing of beauty. The second one would always be a brand killer in the long run. At some point, you would have to change it. And when you change it in the future it would feel like a stranger brand to your existing customers, you would have to build a relationship again with your existing customers.
Avoid Cliches
Cliches are like when someone is designing a logo they would show some building or some architect in the logo if it is about some electronics it would show some elements related to it. It is a total cliche, you should stay away from those logos. It would harm your business more rather than benefiting it. Those kinds of logos don’t do anything to make you stand out from the similar businesses in the market but it shows that your services are very common and it can be delivered by any other brand in that space.
Rather than presenting yourself as a unique brand you would unknowingly portray your brand as a brand similar to every other brand which would ruin your brand image altogether, and it takes huge sums of money and marketing campaigns to reposition your brand.
Keep it Simple & Memorable
There is beauty in simplicity, If you would pick up the logos of top 10 fortune companies in this world, One thing you would find similar in all of them is simplicity. It is not a coincidence that they have a logo which is very simple and minimal but it is intentional to make it more impactful to their target audience.
When something is simply the chances of it to be memorable is very high. People will remember it more, and if people will remember your logo they would trust it more as they would be more comfortable with it. We are more comfortable with something we already know, it is basic psychology of all human beings. So, we should benefit from this psychological aspect of our mind.
Always keep it very simple so that any ordinary person can doodle your logo without thinking much about it, look at McDonald’s logo. Do you wonder why they evolved their logo time after time and they finally came down to such a simple logo after stripping away all the details, extra unnecessary elements from it? To make it more memorable so that people can remember it more which can play into more success of their brand.
Make it timeless
One of the biggest mistake designers and clients make is following a cool design trend which is going on to design their logo. The reason this is bad is after a while that trend would go your logo will become irrelevant and old. So, do not follow any design trend to get your logo designed. Your logo is something that will be present until your business will be there, If it is going to stay for that long then why would you get your logo design by some trend which is temporary.
Usually, trends have a very short life but the life of your logo can be way more than that, so you better not get influenced by some design trend and get excited to design your logo that way. A timeless logo would always stand tall with your brand to impact it positively for the years to come.
Avoid subjective judgments
Stop looking at your business logo as something that you have to fall in love with in the first look but look at it like something which should be more beneficial with its functional aspect. think of how it can benefit your business and represent it better rather than thinking whether you like it or not.
We should keep aside all our personal and subjective judgments aside when we are deciding our logo. You might not like that particular color personally but it might generate more sales, or attract your particular target audience towards your business and services. Even the font you are more of a casual person and funky type so obviously, you would like a font which is not very slick, professional, and sharp. But that is something that would go with your business perfectly. I hope I have made my point, just don’t make up your mind right at that moment whether you like it or not. Just step back and think how would it benefit your business, what would people think when they would look at your logo and take that decision wisely because on that your business’s future also depends.
Choose the colour wisely
Colour holds the actual power and potential of an effective logo. It can communicate your business’s values, nature, and can also generate a certain type of feelings.
Try to notice the colour palette’s of logos in a certain space of business. You would notice that the colour doesn’t vary too much and the tonality will be similar in most of them. Now you can imagine how important to choose the right colour, that’s where a brand expert comes in play. He/she needs to design a logo and choose a colour in a way to make your brand logo relatable and not wandering off too far in order to look different. The tonality needs to be the same while being different which is not that of an easy task to pull off if you ask me.
Usually in my experience clients do not even pay attention to differentiate them from competitors, all they want a good looking logo.
So you better pay attention to the colours that you are deciding for your logo, it might harm your brand image if you would make a wrong decision or by your likes/dislikes.
Should be scalable
You can figure it out easily by the word scalable, If not let me tell you quickly. By scalable we mean here is that you logo is going to be used on a lot of different mediums and platforms. If you are a new business why to think that your logo would never get printed on a huge hoarding or in a very small space like email signatures. Scalability defines its flexibility on getting used anywhere in any size without losing its power to communicate. It should communicate as well on a small business card as it is on a building large hoarding.
For this better stay away from the logos with a lot of details, try to keep things as simple as possible. That would be great for your logo. No wonder every big brand have the logos so simple that it doesn’t even take a second to make its picture in your mind in a fraction of a second. Let’s do a test, think of “Nike”. Does it took you more than a fraction of second, I think not. I think you get it now.
Make it distinct
By distinct I do not mean that it should be something that is so unique that not a single person has any idea what it is and it will make you unique and stand out in the market. It will not, you need to be distinct in your own space. Not to look like every other brand in your domain, other people know that your brand has easy substitutes. Do you think “Apple” has a substitute? I think not the way they have portrayed to everyone they are unique and the products like them cant be made anywhere else. But it is not true it is just there positioning.
We are Apple fans and we would always support it. I do love to work on my mac even though I know the performance of my windows laptop is great and we can get what mac is offering at a lot cheaper price. But it is hard to convince the emotional brand of ours. It can’t be reasoned with.
Should be versatile & Responsive
This is a solution for logo designs to be more scalable without losing its meaning and being more effective on different mediums in different sizes while working differently on different platforms.
After the outbreak of the internet, it became important for the brands to be more effective in different screen sizes. That’s when it happened. Brands started experimenting with their logos to be a little different in different screen sizes.
The details get reduced in smaller screen size. And the bigger the screen the better are the details because it is easy to see the details in bigger screen size.
