Last updated on December 8th, 2017
Some people mistake create a logo for branding. They think that the logo itself is ‘branding’. Your logo is just one of the tools that you have put in place as part of your branding strategy. So, your logo is at best a symbol, which you created to help consumers recognize your business as well as the products or services you offer to them.
Logo is a part of your brand-building strategy. Clearly, you must ensure developing a brand strategy before you create your logo. This is important to note. If you have not made the strategy first, how can you decide the design of your logo? To create a logo, the designer has to choose elements such as colors and fonts carefully in keeping with the business promotion strategy. If you ask a designer to create a logo without knowing your overall brand building strategy, you may send a wrong message to the consumers through the logo. A wrong color, font, icon, shape etc incorporated in the logo can even harm your business prospects in the market.
So, what are the preparations you need to ensure before designing or create a logo?
Now that you know that a brand building strategy must be chalked out prior to creating your logo, we point out some important aspects that you must consider for create a logo design.
- Your logo must portray your business goals and values. Have you already established your goals and values? Have you made up your mind about them? Do not go for logo creation if you have doubts about what should be your business goals and what are core values of your company. So, decide on them first before approaching a logo designer.
- What is your business message? This is an important and perhaps the most crucial question to answer. When the designer knows your message clearly, it forms the basis for picking up the right elements for logo design. Your logo will reflect your message. In fact, the message is a strong link between your logo and brand. So, write your message in a clear language and let your designer know it.
- Make sure that when create a logo design looks professional. Your company may be smaller; still you should not ignore the importance of a professional logo design. In fact, a logo created with principles of logo design and creativity will benefit your small business in many ways in the long run. A professional logo design is memorable and your customers will associate it with the dependable quality of your products and services.
- But if you cannot hire an expensive professional logo designer and let your in-house designer do the job, make sure that you test the logo but if you feel that you are that much creative to create a logo by your own then logo maker tools are also a good option, but make sure that they are not compromising on quality of outcome. Before you properly launch your logo in the market, test its design by taking people’s reactions. You can choose a smaller area of your market to know about the customers’ response. If they do not respond with something good to say about the design, create a logo once again until your customers have something good to say about it.
- Can your logo design survive in the memory of the people for many decades? This is another test for your logo. If your logo design borrows from the contemporary design trends, such a logo is likely to fade away in a year or two just when the trend goes away. Instead, your logo should preferably be designed on some time-tested principles of graphic design. This implies that your designer should choose the elements without any bias towards trends and local cultures as these will restrict your logo to a certain area. Moreover, your consumers build some emotional attachment with your logo. Therefore, repeated changes in logo design may frustrate them.
To conclude, your logo is just one small part of your business branding. All the necessary aspects of the branding should be put in place first so that it can serve as a guideline for your logo designer.