Image of prominent logos that follows expert logo design tips.

Create Your Perfect Logo With These 7 Logo Design Tips

One of the key parts of branding, and undoubtedly one of the most recognizable parts of a brand, is the logo. A good logo is eye-catching, and sticks in your mind after you see it. Think of the Apple logo: simple, clean, and timeless.

What makes this logo so iconic? For starters, the designer used good design principles. However, good principles alone cannot magically create a good logo. That’s why we are here to help you by providing you with seven of our best logo design tips.

Understand Your Audience

One of the most important parts of designing a great logo is knowing who you are designing it for. Before you even begin brainstorming your logo, you need to understand the target audience. This will heavily influence the design process going forward.

Your target audience determines how you will use the different design elements: the color palette, the typefaces, how much negative space is present, etc. Understanding your audience helps you determine how these factors will play into your logo design, and leads you to creating a memorable logo.

Your Design Should Be Timeless

How often do you see something and think about how old it is? If someone thinks that when they see your logo, you have done something very wrong.

Of course, design trends change over time, and not every business’ logo looks the same as it did when they were originally founded. However, a good business logo can stand for very extended periods of time before introducing a new logo, if designed well of course.

A major key to timeless design is understanding your brand identity, and not strictly adhering to design trends. Your brand, if well built, will change very little if at all. Therefore, designing your logo with focus on your brand identity will help it stay consistently relevant and recognizable.

Don’t use typography for your brand name that became popular recently, and instead use typefaces that have stood the test of time, such as sans serif fonts for example. And remember – legibility is of the utmost importance when choosing your typeface. Choose a simple color scheme that does not overly rely on what is popular right now, but still complements your brand personality.

Keep It Simple

Simple logo designs are king. There is no need to overcomplicate things when it comes to professional logo design. While many different types of logos exist and are effective, the simplest logos are often the most recognizable. Look at the Apple logo, or the Nike Swoosh. Both are very minimalist, with almost no detail whatsoever. If you asked someone to think of a logo off the top of their head, it is very likely that one of these two were the first thing that they thought of.

Design Needs to Be Scalable

Say you have what you believe is your perfect company logo. Does it look good on different mediums, or in different sizes? If you answered no, then it is not your perfect company logo.

A logo needs to look good no matter how big or small it is, and no matter what it is seen on. Whether it is a computer screen, a billboard or a business card, or even a t-shirt, your logo needs to be consistently high-quality across all formats in order to be an effective logo.

In order for your logo to be easily scalable, it will help to be designed and saved in vector format (which we will touch on later).

Analyze Your Competition

Before you finalize your logo, look at others in your industry. What do their logos look like? What kinds of designs are they using? Do they feature their company name prominently? How much white space do they leave in the design?

There is nothing wrong with getting some logo ideas from your competitors, so long as you do not outright copy them. Look at how their customers (and your potential customers) respond to their logo design. What works, and what does not? Incorporate elements similar to what makes their logo effective, and ignore elements that are making their logo less attractive.

Stay True to Your Brand

Your logo is going to be seen on all types of media your company will release: social media posts, advertisements of all kinds, content, etc. Because of this, it needs to be consistent with your brand, regardless of format. Do not use different colors, or experiment with other design elements if they explicitly go against your already established brand.

If you stray from your brand identity when designing your logo, your consumers will take notice. Good logo design makes sure to always have your brand in mind when designing, and does not stray for any reason. Your brand logo is a direct representation of your company itself.

Make Sure You Have a Vector File Saved

While not exactly a tip for the decision making part of the design process, this is still very important for you to know. Simply put, a vector file is a type of graphic file in which the image does not change in quality when it is enlarged. Think of any time you have had an image saved as a .JPEG. Any time you try to make it bigger, you can begin to see individual pixels, and the quality of the image is severely affected.

With a vector file (.SVG) or (.EPS), the image stays sharp and high quality, no matter how much you enlarge the image. Using logo makers such as Adobe Illustrator, you can design your logos in vector format. This way, when you need to scale your logo for different types of media, it will always be high quality.

Lastly, when you do have your vector file saved, make sure that you have taken note of the RGB and CMYK codes of your logo’s color scheme. This way you can make sure colors are consistent across both digital and print media.

Ready to Design Your Logo?

Now that you have made it this far, you should be able to get started on your own logo using our logo design tips! Although these tips alone are not enough to turn you into a professional graphic designer, these design tips will serve you greatly with branding in general.

If you do not have access to a professional graphic designer, no need to worry! Here at Lift Marketing, we can handle all of your graphic design needs, as well as anything else for your digital marketing strategy! Just reach out to us here so we can get started.