What makes a good business logo is whatever creates the lasting brand recognition you are after. Brand recognition translates to long-term customer loyalty along with a personal connection that goes somewhat beyond buying t-shirts with famous logos.
According to most experts, you need to keep some basic principles in mind when designing a business logo:
- What are your colors? Here’s what Brad VanAuken from the Branding Strategy Insider says:
“Color is an important consideration in your brand identity system. Colors have a significant impact on people’s emotional state…they have a wide variety of specific mental associations. In fact, the effects are physiological, psychological, and sociological.”
Choosing the right color for your logo, according to VanAuken, is something that needs to be thoroughly tested. Colors have distinct cultural associations. Americans, for example, associate with the Pepsi logo because of its color combination of red, white and blue. There are also practical considerations, because colors have an impact on how your logo attracts attention, how easy it is to read or be seen at night, etc.
- Symbols are the brand imagery. If you don’t think, “simpler is better,” reflect for a moment on the world-famous Nike logo. Probably the biggest problem with business logo design is a tendency to be too intricate, which is why coats of arms don’t make good business logos.
In your quest for finding the best symbolic image that reflects your brand best, you can go the literal route or use some or all of your company’s initials. Two classic examples are Twitter, which uses the white birdie on the blue background, and Facebook, which uses the white letter “f” on a darker blue backdrop. (Interestingly, according to psychologists, the color blue tends to suppress the appetite.)
Once again: simplify, simplify, simplify. The power of simplicity in getting a brand message across is, again, demonstrated by the already successful company logos of the giants like Microsoft, eBay and Google Chrome. Here’s a summary of another business.com piece on five tips for creating a great business logo:
1. Settle on words or a symbol for your logo. Don’t use both.
2. When you choose colors for your logo, remember, “Less is more.”
3. Judge whether the logo will look good everywhere it is displayed.
4. Make sure it is a logical fit to your brand and makes sense to your audience.
5. When you think you’ve found the perfect logo, check again; you may need to simplify more.
