3 musts for your logo designs
You’ve got everything thought out, you’ve been planning this for years... You’ve got the keys to your new downtown office, your shop is looking immaculate… You print business cards, and posters, make your socials page and even blow up the logo to stick on the side of a van…
Then one Sunday afternoon, your grandmother mentions she thought the logo was for a children’s TV show, your friend says ‘the spacing looks a little off’ and your mother thinks the P you used kind of resembles the male nether-regions. Your bubble is burst, your first impression is tarnished and you’ll have to spend double, maybe triple on redesigning, reprinting and pushing back the opening date (not to mention the irreparable damage to your confidence). Don’t fall victim to bad design, think carefully about what is necessary and what is not.
Here are a few lessons I’ve learnt from over ten years of designing logos to get you started down the right path, for new business owners and designers to nail that first impression.
Don’t force it
As designers we want to overcomplicate the solution, we’re dying to show our skills and every logo we create needs to be a genius-triple-entendre-with-an-icon-hidden-in-the-G. Everyone wants to nail the perfect negative-space cake in the capital letter of their Bakery’s logo but in most cases, it will never work and forcing it just cheapens the tone of your brand. Ask yourself how many of the biggest brands you can name have an image in the type and how many are just the name typed out in a relevant font?
So start by finding a relevant font that shows the character of the business and encapsulates how they want to present themselves. Occasionally your work will be done here, think long and hard before adding embellishments for embellishment’s sake, what you’re looking for is clarity.
Be patient, the logo isn’t there to tell the entire story of the business. Keep it simple and pack a punch with that first impression. If you do find that genius icon in the letterforms of the business name, go for it but my point is don’t chase it. If it doesn’t come naturally let it go and opt for tidiness instead.
Think about placement
So you’ve typed out your business name in your chosen font, chances are it’s looking a bit stale at this point. This is the stage where I would think ‘where will this logo sit?’. Is this brand going to be ultra-minimalist? In which case does the logo look good nice and small on a blank background? Is this font going to be accompanied by an icon or motif? If so does it balance with said motif and how?
These are the kind of questions that help me to fine-tune what’s going to work with a logo. The logo needs to be flexible and work everywhere it’s going to be placed even within itself, so think about where this will be and shape the logo to suit. A lot of the time this way of thinking shapes how the logo will look for me but more importantly it shows me what won’t work.
Keep it simple
This one is something that runs through everything I do in design. Keeping it clean, legible and classy will always be the priority. Knowing what is enough is an art in itself and something I will probably write an entire blog piece on in future. But for now…
Of course, detail and intricacy is the most obvious way to wow an audience and so it is often the first thing designers and business owners will aim for. Similar to the previous two tips though a logo doesn’t need to do all of this by itself. A brand can still be vibrant, intricate and elaborate with a minimal logo, leave this job to the artwork, the patterning and the secondary copy.
A brilliant idea that quietly sits on a humble, one-font logo exudes far more confidence and style than that of a thousand different vector lines creating an ornate fire-breathing dragon attempting to show the intricacy and superiority of your brand. Of course, there will always be a place for detail in design but training yourself to value simplicity first can better inform the use of this detail in future.