The importance of a logo is undeniable because this one image creates brand awareness and marketing opportunities and communicates your company’s message to the world. With so much responsibility leaning on your logo, you have to get it right.
How do you know you designed the right logo? You can start by knowing which questions to ask.
12 Queries to Consider Before Creating a Logo
Ask yourself the following questions to find out if your custom logo design represents the finest attributes of your company.
You might begin by first listing the values your business upholds and how your logo might reflect these values.
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What Best Suits the Company?
Does your company specialize in selling children’s clothing? Are you an SEO-based company for online local businesses? Does your business provide shipping and logistics support to regional businesses?
Whatever the primary emphasis of your business is, choose a single image to symbolize it. Since Amazon sells practically everything, they included an “A to Z” sign in their logo.
FedEx uses a directed arrow to symbolize this idea because they are a fast delivery company. A smiling face could represent a company that sells children’s apparel while rising graphs or arrows are effective symbols for an SEO company.
Most coffee establishments use a cup and steam to represent what they offer.
You must find your company’s appropriate image, typeface, or color based on your services.
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What Logos Speak to You?
Are you confident in your vision for your logo? Can’t think of a brilliant idea? The next step is looking at various logos to get ideas and inspiration.
They don’t have to be from businesses in the same industry. Look around and list the most recognizable logos you can think of that stuck with you.
Determine why these are the logos that resonated with you by looking for commonalities. They may all have used a particular shade of color or a font that appeals to you.
Then, you can use these components and features to design your logo.
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Who are Your Industry Rivals?
A logo’s main function is to make your brand easier to recognize and to convey your company’s message quickly. By examining your competition, you may start your investigation into the components that your organization will use to fulfill this purpose.
Consider cafes that serve coffee and tea. To represent a hot beverage, they frequently utilize an illustration of a cup with steam lines. Some people will include a picture of a coffee or tea leaf or croissant with it to further suggest they provide organic beverages with something to snack on.
You need to take a step back and choose if you want to adopt your competitors’ trends or follow your own. Do you want to emulate them or try to stand apart from the crowd?
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What Color Palette Works Best for Your Brand?
Don’t choose colors at random. Choose hues that aren’t just your favorites. Remember that colors psychologically impact your target audience when it comes to branding and enterprises.
For instance, using red as the main color of your logo universally emphasizes the idea of youth, aggression, and brave choices.
The color green is most frequently used in nature-related brands and eco-friendly logos since it is frequently meant to represent growth and tranquility.
Due to its friendliness and approachability, orange is frequently used on retail websites like Amazon.
Choose a hue that best represents your company’s theme or the emotion you wish to make the audience feel with just one glance.
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Which Typeface Best Suits Your Brand?
Ever ponder the use of the same typeface in all memes? It’s because people frequently connect certain feelings or concepts with fonts.
For instance, Comic Sans is a casual font style that looks unprofessional and unattractive. Midway through the 1990s, it was popular, but that popularity has since waned.
It only takes a glance at your competitors and the overall usage of each industry. For printed products, newspapers, for instance, frequently utilize Times, Helvetica, or Century Old Style.
Font combinations like Source Sans Pro Regular and Crimson Text Regular are frequently seen in shopping and retail ecommerce stores.
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Who Are Your Ideal Customers?
Does your company cater to those who require mortgage refinancing? Do you sell goods to medical students or provide HVAC maintenance for large local businesses?
When creating a logo, one of the most crucial questions is who the target market is. By figuring out who your target market is, you may eliminate any logo components that you know won’t be effective and concentrate your design efforts on those it will impact.
A logo created for adults won’t be as effective for children under 20, and vice versa. Children’s logos should be colorful, whereas a design intended for home buyers should be uniform, flat, and professional.
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Is it noticeable despite its size and color?
Making a draft logo with numerous colors and corners from the beginning is a common design error. The logo might appear beautiful but loses its identity when converted to a black-and-white image or shrunk to fit a tiny icon box.
For this reason, it’s imperative to create a monochromatic logo first. This ensures that you pay attention to its silhouette initially. You may ensure the logo is recognized by doing this regardless of size or color.
Why is this crucial? Remember that you might need to reduce the size of your logo for icon pictures or letterheads.
Additionally, your logo will be used by others besides you. Your logo may be used on a poster by advertising firms you collaborate with in monochrome or one flat color. Your logo might need to be resized by bloggers to fit the dimensions of their blog postings.
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Does It Have an Eye-Catching Sketch or Trick?
Some logos are still used twenty years or more after they were first designed. This can be achieved by applying a distinctive and unforgettable design philosophy and considering the questions on this list.
Others make their logo stand out from the competitors by employing a catchy quirk. The use of a logo with a hidden image is a typical trick.
As was already noted, Amazon’s logo features an arrow that extends from A to Z to represent how they sell anything and everything. Baskin Robbins, known for its 31 flavors, has a logo in which the letters B and R combine to make the number 31.
Does your logo contain a clever trick, a secret meaning, or at the very least something distinctive that people can connect with?
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Does the Design Make Sense?
It would help if you also considered whether your logo is generally appropriate. For this reason, you should include a translator on your design team. Despite appearing benign in English, a logo design could be offensive in another language.
Additionally, offensive imagery has no place in a logo. Some logos seem benign, but the designers didn’t perceive the incorrect imagery that others could see because they lacked awareness.
The Archdiocesan Youth Commission’s 1973 logo is a well-known illustration of an incorrect logo. Its initial intent was to portray an adult leading a youngster, but the design also makes it appear like a child is being sexually abused.
There is also the Kids Exchange logo, which many people mistook for “Kid Sexchange” due to the incorrect font type and lack of space.
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Is the Design Affordable?
If your budget does not allow for a complex logo design, none of the advice and queries above will be relevant.
What qualities make a logo pricey? It costs more to print logos that are large and have vivid colors. Even though paying artists every time you need to copy and draw intricate patterns is pricey, they look visually appealing.
This increases the attraction and affordability of simpler designs.
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Is It Classic and Ageless?
Consider whether your logo design is popular according to current times. If so, you might want to think about revamping it. Trends from now will pass, and your logo might not be as relevant in the future.
Take a look at the Coca-Cola or FedEx logos. Due to their classic designs, such logos have endured over time. Despite shifting trends, they remain timeless and relevant.
Create a logo that reflects this line of thinking. It must continue to have value even if the market trends change.
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Should I Appoint an Expert Logo Designer?
The last but most crucial question is whether you should work with a logo designer. What is the role of a logo designer?
After asking you all the information listed above, they attempt to design a logo for you and work with you to create a concept that ideally captures your company’s message.
Yes, hiring a designer could seem pricey. But because you won’t need to redecorate every few years, the investment pays off. Your organization may wind up with a logo that can be used for many years.
Conclusion: Create your ideal logo today
These are the important inquiries to make when creating a logo. You can eliminate the design elements that are bad for your brand by correcting each one. You may increase the identity and reach of your business by choosing the ideal image, font style, and color.