Nike, Apple, Adidas, Sell, BMW, and so on, what do all these names have in common? Aside from the fact they’re industry giants, they each have a distinctive logo that separates them from the rest of the competition. When you hear the name Nike, you picture an athlete running, overcoming obstacles and conquering them. If you see a BMW logo on a car, you envision German ingenuity and brilliance. The effect of a logo design on how people perceive your brand is instrumental, and that is why many of these brands spend millions to get the right tone in their logos.
You might think it’s simple to create a logo, but if it were, it wouldn’t be as big an industry as it actually is. If also it were easy, you wouldn’t have as many failed logos out there as you quite often see. Designing a logo that reflects your brand image –– and gives away the exact tone you want it to –– is extremely complicated and just hard work. Simply put, a bad logo can mean the doom of your business.
IMAGE: PEXELS
The Identity
Your logo is a reflection of your brand’s identity. It’s the first thing your target audience see and it’s what they’ll be making their first impressions on. Ask yourself this: what kind of message do I want to give about my brand, through the logo? Asking this question is very important before starting the design process because it will mean you’re actually following logical, calculated steps, not just designing aimlessly.
The Brand
There’s actually a difference between a brand and a company. You can control the company, but never the brand. You have to sell whatever products or services your company sells; a brand sells itself. The brand is your company’s personality; it’s how people see your organization. A logo plays a very important role in expressing your company’s personality. Once your logo is out, it becomes extremely difficult to control how people react to that logo. That is why it’s very important to set the perception you want people to have of the company. You’ll never be able to control how people view you, but what you can control is what they see, which makes a good logo crucial to a company’s fate. That is why dealing with professionals to handle your logo design process makes a lot of difference than taking a shot at it yourself. There are plenty of good companies out there that offer logo design service, like logo design UK, which offers a lot of services your brand image will be needing.
Factors Affecting How People Perceive Your Logo And Brand
Colors
Believe it or not color is a deciding factor in how people view your brand. Studies show that people form a judgment on a product within the first 2 minutes of viewing it, and 60-90% of that is based on color alone! You should never underestimate the power of aesthetics; people are easily impressed as they are turned off. And colors are one of the first things people make an impression about your brand. So, choose them wisely.
Presentation
Ever made a massive amount of work preparing a presentation about a topic, and then presented it poorly eventually when the time came? This is exactly the same case with a logo. You can have a very powerful company with an actual important product or service, but if the presentation to the public is bad, then none of it really matters. Well, logo plays a massive part in how you present your brand’s image. We live in the age of social media, a time where companies are ruined or made by a click on social media. You need to be very careful how you present your image, via the logo, because how you present it is how people will see it. Create a logo that coincides with your brand vision and reinforces what you’re trying to say.
Complexity
Yes, your logo needs to convey a subtle message about your brand, rather than being just a random color or pattern. But there’s a thing as being too subtle or too creative, actually. People won’t like seeing with a logo that makes them feel stupid, and that is definitely not how you want them feeling. Going over the top with the creativity can lead to criticism and losing control of your brand image.
Stay away from logos that have too much color in them and just scale poorly overall; less is more when it comes to logo design. Also, don’t use too many fonts –– 2 is usually the limit. It makes you look unprofessional and rather amateurish, regardless of how cool or smart the fonts are.
You might do well to stay away from current trends, too. While you wouldn’t want your design to look obsolete or something, understand that trends come and go. They fade away easily and you’ll hardly encounter many trends that can actually survive the test of time. Your logo, however, is supposed to do just that and last over the years without feeling outdated or yesterday’s news.
Tips
You want people to see your logo and feel a certain something; always keep that in mind during the design phase. As we said earlier, you can only control what you show your customers; how they’ll react is completely out of your hands. So, create a logo that is simple and easily recognizable. It should be usable over both digital and printed media.
Your logo needs to be memorable and yet relevant. Don’t go and create a very cool logo that has absolutely nothing to do with your business. Remember, your logo reflects how people will perceive your brand and your identity. Most people aren’t exactly graphic designers, but everyone can tell a bad logo or a boring one.
You need something interesting that will grab people’s attention and set the tone for how they’ll be viewing your brand in the upcoming years. Success in that area means people will remember your logo and will have gained their trust. They say a logo speaks louder than words, and truer words have not been spoken. Whether people will associate your brand with something positive or a complete catastrophe is completely dependent on how much effort you’ll put into the process of logo design.
If you are interested in even more design-related articles and information from us here at Bit Rebels then we have a lot to choose from.
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