Does your business or your individual endeavors, like when you are an influencer, already have a logo? If you do not have a logo yet, it is time that you start creating one!
Logos are beneficial for any business. They grab your customers’ attention, make a strong first impression, and provide a foundation for your brand’s identity. Logos are also memorable, separate you from your competition, foster brand loyalty, and are liked by your audience.
Designing a logo is not an overnight process. So without further ado, here is your step-by-step guide to a successful logo design.
Step 1: Start Telling Your Story
Businesses are created to earn profits. For you to achieve this, you should be able to sell yourself and your product. Marketers today agree that buyers connect more when your product tells a story rather than just informing them about the basics of your product. What does this mean? There should be a story in your logo.
To do this, ask yourself about the story behind your company. For example, with Coca-Cola, you do not just see the beverage but also polar bears and thick, white script font styles.
Think beyond what your company is doing and tell your customers the reasons behind why you do it. This will be the root of your story and should be reflected in all aspects of your logo.
Step 2: Brainstorm Words That Associate With Your Brand
After you create your story, your logo should transition from this story to selling. You can use an online thesaurus to enter a term that best describes the product you offer.
For instance, if you are into selling clothes, you can type in “clothing.” You will see a lot of synonyms for this word. Work on them. Find around five to 10 words that describe what you do and why you do it, as from the previous step. Each of these words will help you refine a concept.
Step 3: Craft Ideas Based On Those Words
Once you are aware of your “why” and the keywords related to your product, literally get a paper and pencil and begin sketching ideas that come into your head. Do not be frustrated if your ideas are not perfect at first. You will get there.
While you are crafting ideas for your logo, remember these crucial tips. First, keep the logo’s shape simple. Simpler logos are more memorable than complicated ones. Second, do not forget about your logo’s colors. Be selective of the colors you will use. As a rule of thumb, avoid choosing over three colors. And choose colors that will make your brand stand out.
Step 4: Test These Sketches With Your Buyer Persona
Once you have your sketches finalized on paper, take a step back and choose your top three concepts. Remember, these are those that your eyes keep going back to. Then, show these to other people.
Share your drafts with your friends, relatives, and colleagues you trust. It will be better if you can test and show these sketches to those that fit your buyers’ personas or the profiles of your ideal customers. Doing this gives you the most insightful and meaningful opinion on your artwork because it determines how your customers will receive your brand.
Be open to hearing honest feedback and avoid taking the negative comments personally. Take them as constructive criticism. After all, these will help you make your final logo better. Use this feedback to select one final concept that you will develop into a design.
Step 5: Refine Your Chosen Concept Or Sketch
Congratulations, you are almost there toward your final logo. Once you have identified that one final sketch or idea, refine it, thinking about your story from the first step.
You should also consider the second step and think about the terms you have identified with your brand. Now look at your chosen concept and ask yourself which terms this sketch does not capture yet. Use them when refining your concept further.
Step 6: You Can Use A Free Logo Design Platform To Develop Its Layout
This time, you will be turning your sketch into a digital format. To do this, you can refer to various free logo design platforms that offer ways to attain this step.
In this step, the logo’s layout is among the most vital things you must get right. Ensure all of your logo’s shapes and texts are perfectly spaced, and the logo itself is at par with its surroundings.
Your logo does not have to be symmetrical, as you can get as creative when designing how it will look like. However, the logo should remain aligned. Technically speaking, the design must be balanced.
Step 7: Choose Versatile Color Options
Then, the colors of your logo must be right. Here is a trick: always ensure you have color variations for light and dark backgrounds. You can create various options regarding the color schemes of your logo, so it will be easier for you when you need to already print your logo on t-shirts, stickers, coffee mugs, notepads, and more.
Step 8: Select Your Font Style
You have your logo’s color scheme. Now, it is time to choose your logo’s font style. This step involves combining your imagery with text. Consider the image of your brand when choosing your font style.
Your font choice will say a lot about your business. In relation to this, avoid generic fonts like Times New Roman, Comic Sans, and the like that will not be attractive to your customers.
Step 9: Make Sure Your Logo Is Scalable
This step is rather on the technical side. The perfect logo should represent your company on various platforms, whether these are in print, on your website, on your social media pages, or across the Internet. In other words, you want a logo that is suitable when printed on a giant billboard and, at the same time, looks good when printed on tiny merchandise.
Ensure your logo is legible, regardless of its size.
You can either design your logo on your own, especially if you have the skills or use a website that provides logo making and designing. Among the most popular websites that offer logo making for free is Namecheap.
Namecheap lets you create your logo with the perfect icon, color scheme, and font for your business or your personal brand. It has a unique design wizard that allows you to choose styles as the Namecheap software generates thousands of high-quality and custom logo designs. Namecheap also has a library of professionally designed logos to help you gain ideas.
Every logo design process changes according to time. What is acceptable before may not be acceptable today. So we hope this step-by-step guide to your successful logo design in 2022 will help you create a logo relevant to your consumers’ demands.
