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We live in a world full of companies and brands, and everywhere we go we see hundreds of logos from different companies, and the reality is that we forget the most part of them, but there are some brand logos that we maintain in our head, and you might ask why this happen and how your logo design can avoid be forgotten and stay relevant, don’t worry, on this post I will explain you the 7 secret rules to make a good logo design.
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The first step in creating a good logo design is to keep it simple, this point it’s directly related to memorability because people only will spend some seconds or less looking at your logo, and in many cases, they only will see it indirectly, and we as graphic designers need to play with that fact when designing a logo and keep it simple to make it much easier for the viewer to memorize it.
By removing extra elements and making the logo design more simple we increase the chances of our brand logo getting in viewers head easier by reducing the number of graphic elements to process and focusing only on the important elements of your brand.
As I mention in my post about minimalism on graphic design, we need to play with a few graphic elements to design the perfect logo and use them wisely to encapsulate the brand’s message and personality, and how you achieve it? by using shape psychology, color theory, and font psychology, as every graphic element, color, shape, and font have their own meaning and personality.
A good example of simplicity in logo design is Apple’s logo, which is a bitten apple in one color, very simple right? that’s right and it’s the key part of how everybody knows Apple Logo, due to its simplicity it makes it easier for the viewer to memorize an apple and associate it to the brand.
To make your logo design good it’s important to make it relevant and connect with your audience by looking at it, you need to find the way your logo will speak to your audience depending on their age, education, values, and hobbies and use design elements more appealing to them to make your logo connect better with your audience.
The big difference between a good logo design with average one is that the good one stays on their customer’s brain because they associate it with different feelings and emotions that your brand wants to transmit, and if you want the perfect logo design it must stand out from your competitors to catch more attention, this will help your logo to catch your possible customers and stay on your audience memory.
Being memorable for a logo design may be the most important quality for a logo at the same time that the most difficult to achieve, remember what we talk about in the first quality? yes, make your logo simple to help the viewer to memorize it and have your brand logo in mind, and associate it with your company.
Create a memorable logo design might seem complex but what you need to achieve with your logo is that people only seeing it once should be able to describe it to someone else or draw it on paper, if we can achieve it we make sure that your logo will stay on customers mind. To keep your logo memorable it should always create an impression to the viewer and transmit certain emotions that the viewer later can associate with your company.
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This quality is really important for a good logo design and here many brands and big companies fail to achieve it if you want a great logo design for your company it must be timeless, this means that your brand logo should be looking good today and for the next years and avoid graphic design trends when designing a logo.
The focus when you design a logo is to showcase the brand identity and companies message using graphic design language and avoid using trends without any connection to the brand, these design trends might be looking good today but no one can assure you that these trends will live forever and your logo will be looking obsolete in a short amount of time.
It’s important to say that a logo redesign or rebranding are good options regarding brands logo but constant changes can interfere with viewers able to memorize your logo and associate with your brand. Also remark that good logo redesign consists of updating companies logo to remove some extra elements or to adapt it to brand’s new message, and in many cases, they maintain the most memorable element of the logo.
Have you ever heard about responsive logo design? so, the fifth quality for a good logo design is that it must be versatile when designing a logo you need to think about where it will be used and adapt it to the different environments it will be placed in and still look good.
A good logo design will work great on an Instagram profile pic and a giant banner across the city, so you need to design your logo to be able to work well on digital platforms like mobile or web at the same time that it will work well in printed applications.
If you research some brand style guides you will see that many logos have different variations on size or disposition having vertical and horizontal versions at the same time that there can be color variations of the logo maintaining the brand colors.
As it happens with shapes and typography, each color have his own meaning and transmit different emotions, as for example red can transmit a passion feeling and blue transmits trustworthiness. Unconsiscnes colors also can evoke real-life elements as for example blue can be associated with water and green with nature and forests.
There can be universal associations as the two examples mentioned before, but also there can be more cultural associations as for example in the US green is the color of money and in Japan purple is associated with evil, so take care about these details when designing a Logo.
As mentioned on the first quality, logos should be simple to make it easier to memorize at the same time that it needs to transmit the brand’s message and identity, so use the color psychology to transmit the company message, and if you want to learn more about the color theory I have a post about it!
It might be obvious, but to create a good logo design it must be unique and stand out from your competence. As it happens with your company, you have your own message and your own identity, this must be reflected on your logo, describe through it in what you differentiate your brand from your competitors and why the customer should choose you!
For example, if you have an airplane-related company, avoid using an airplane illustration as to your logo because it’s too obvious and you won’t differentiate your company from other airplane companies, instead of it, try to play with more metaphorical concepts and express with your logo what makes your company unique!
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In a conclusion, there no secret method with point a and point b to create a good logo design, and instead of following design trends and obvious choices, if you have a good logo design you need to see logos as a way of transmitting messages, use your brand logo to transmit what makes your brand unique through color, shapes, and fonts and then you will create a unique logo design.
If you found this post useful you might like to read these posts about Logo Design Inspiration.
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