Your logo design is the first impression that your target market will have of your business. You need to make sure that it is attractive and full of meaning! Whether you are creating a logo from scratch or starting from a logo template, here are five tips on how to make an awesome logo.
1) The Color of Your Logo
Your logo needs to flow with the design of your website and the rest of your marketing campaign. You will likely need to make some changes along the process of coloring your logo; however, you should create your logo with strong and simple colors that can be seen on any platform.
Just as with the rest of your online marketing and website design, your logo should be able to fit into the structure of a responsive website as well. There is simply too much commerce going on in the mobile environment to consider this as a luxury; as a matter of fact, you may want to consider the colors of your logo in the responsive environment as your primary concern. Depending on your industry and where you expect to receive most of your commerce in the next five years, create the colors for your logo with respect to the environment in which it will be seen.
In general, colors should be consistent. Do not put light against light, as this tends to reduce the contrast and the effectiveness of a logo. Your logo should be kept as simple as possible; however, there should be complementary elements within the colors that flow into the design of your website.
2) The Logo Size in a Site Header
The size of your logo in the site header should also be looked at within the realm of the responsive website as well. Because iPhone and Android users will be looking at a six-inch screen rather than a 25-inch screen, your logo should definitely take this spacing into consideration.
In most cases, you will be able to scale the size of your logo depending on the size of the screen. This works best with high quality .PNG images that give you the leverage that you need to scale up or down without creating edges on the picture. Keep your logo small to medium in size no matter what – it will likely not be the central point of your website on every page. Depending on where you decide to place the logo on your website, you will need to change the sizing as well.
Keep in mind that your logo is first and foremost a directional tool – this is the evidence that will show your potential customer that they have come to the right place. Your logo should then pass off the attention of the customer to your sales items or other relevant information [read: If you have a high bounce rate for a relevant ad, you are likely taking attention away from relevant information on your sales page with your logo, so reduce the size!].
3) The Amateur Logo vs. The Professional Logo
No matter your industry, the graphical structure of your website is of the utmost importance. For this reason, you should spend money on a professional logo in most cases. Truthfully, the only time that you should be considering an amateur logo is when you are testing a certain aspect of your marketing campaign during a multivariate phase.
It is also bad form to “go with the crowd” just because a new and exciting technology has been created to make logos more 3-D or robotic looking. Once a technology has hit the mainstream, it is really already out the door. On top of this, if the new technique does not fit your logo graphic design, then your logo will stand out for no reason. People will become confused as to the type of business that you run. In this day and age, the least bit of confusion will cause people to click away from your website and never come back.
If you do not have professional web design in house, then partnering with a third-party logo designer is one of the best investments that you can make in your business. You want a logo that you can use for an extended period of time, so you need to get it right the first time. There is nothing worse than having a beautifully coded website with a less than beautiful logo.
4) The Structure of the Logo
It is a huge misconception within the logo design industry that the raster based program can create logos that are worthy of professional use. In most cases, this rumor has been spread by amateur logo designers in order to sell more logo templates. For the most part, logos should be made inside of a vector program. Designs that are made inside of this type of a program can be scaled to any size without losing quality.
Vector programs also have a much easier time converting colors to different screens. Since you need your website to be responsive, you will have to create a logo with a color structure that can move between a laptop screen and an iPhone screen. Vector programs are the only programs that can do this with any kind of efficiency.
5) Abstract Logo or No?
Finally, you should have a discussion with the other members of your company as to the “artistic nature” of your logo. Some of the best logos in the world are quite abstract. For instance, the Nike swoosh does not correspond with any natural shape in nature. However, the swoosh does bring to mind a checkmark shape that can be associated with finishing a challenging task or breaking a new barrier. This feeling of completeness is something that Nike has played off of for many generations. Although the Nike swoosh is considered “abstract,” by logo graphic design and marketing experts, it definitely brings to mind feelings that are not abstract by using shapes that are very close to things that we see in everyday life.
If you are going to have an abstract logo, make sure that it has the same kind of meaning as the Nike logo. If you and your graphic designer cannot come up with an idea like this, it is usually best to keep your ideas straightforward and simple. You may choose to create a logo out of simple text – if you cannot come up with anything else, this is always an effective technique.
Your logo graphic design is one of the most important steps that you will take in your online branding efforts. Be sure that you take the time to see the entire process through. Do not take any shortcuts when it comes to your logo; remember that this is the first item that your potential customers will see when they click on your website. Your logo will be the difference between new customers trying your business or leaving it for the next person.