Guidelines For Designing a Logo

Designing a logo is the next step after naming a business and creating a tagline or slogan that starts to develop your brand. Company logo designs are the core of the corporate identity by defining and symbolizing who you are and where you fit in. The vision of the logo is many times thought of when selecting the name and thinking of the iconic symbol that goes along with the name. But how will consumers react? Do you need a symbol or graphic element or just a text logo? What will elicit the emotional response that will make consumers remember the logo and with products such as clothing will make them wear it? Awareness, acceptability by being cool/aesthetically pleasing and proven performance are the driving force.
Acceptability/aesthetically pleasing starts with the name, the logo design and then with brand message of the promise to meet their expectations.
Designing a logo incorporates what you do, who you are and what you want consumers to remember you as. Text logos, symbolic logos, illustrative logos - how do you determine what will work best?
Guidelines for Designing A Logo
1. Text Logos. These logos concentrate on the logo font and do not have any graphic design element outside of the font choice. Google. There is no symbol or graphic design element to their logo -which allows them to add certain elements for holidays or special events.
2. Symbolic Logos. Graphic elements that visually reflect an aspect of the business. Plumber who incorporates a plumbers pipe into a letter of their name or a lawyer who has the scale or gavel next to their name. Before even seeing the name, you see the graphic element which tells you what they do.
3. Illustrative. Illustrations/Characters tend to focus on a mascot or a part of the business that consumers can associate with. A bug or spider or a insect repellant company. This elicits a negative but positive - you do not want these in our home.
4. Combination. These logos combine a logo font along with a graphic design element to give a visual of what you do.
A company logo design needs also to determine where the logo will be represented. A company that is strictly online has less challenges in logo fonts but at times more in colors as screen settings change colors. A product needs to take into consideration the color, the logo font, reversing out the logo to match where it is being reproduced and developing a graphic standards of how the corporate identity is to be represented. Determining how you wish consumers to view and recognize our company is the driving force of designing a logo.
Suzanne Vara is a principle at Kherize5 Advertising & Marketing, a Las Vegas based agency. We provide innovative marketing solutions by combining traditional advertising and marketing with social interactive media.