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Logo Design 101

  • by Lois Nur Fathiarini
  • September 23, 2022
  • 5 minutes read
  • 0 comments

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Although looks very simple, a logo is a complicated design. A unique and interesting logo is not enough, you also need to think the branding function of the logo itself. What’s actually the relationship between a logo and a brand? We’ll explain briefly in the article below.

What is a Logo?

Logo is a part of lettering, shape, or a combination of both that forms an image. This image is an identity of a business, a company or a particular organization. Eventhough it’s ‘only’ one image, logo can shows many things such as who or what your company or organization is, your type of service or activity you do, or what kind of value you offer.

Types and Examples of Logo

Lettermark or Monogram

The main characterization of this kind of logo is the visualization of the company’s initial. Here are some examples.

source: GraphicMama

Logotype or Wordmark

Eventhough it looks similar, this kind of logo is different than lettermark. While lettermark is a visualization of the company’s initial, a wordmark logo is a visualization of the brand’s full name. Here are some examples.

source: GraphicMama

Symbol

Both type of logos mentioned before has letters as its main components, not like symbolic logos. This popular type of logo only has their trademark shapes or icons. Here are some examples.

source: 99Designs

Badge

There are some logos with badge designs. It’s characterized mainly by a combination of shapes, symbols and letterings. Here are some examples.

source: Designazure.com

What’s the Purpose of a Logo?

To build your brand identity

A logo is basically your brand identity foundation. We must remember that a logo has color, tone and font elements. Any of these elements can visualized what your brand actually is.

To raise brand recognition

We can look up to some big brands in the market, which has outstanding logos. Without further research, many people already recognized them. This is the next step of a brand function. By recognizing a brand from its logo, a logo designer has achieved its purpose.

source: LokusDesign

To display a professional brand

When your logo is already recognized by many people, your brand will look professional and trustworthy. The audience will have more level of trust in buying your products or service, because they feel that the brand has quality.

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Logo-Making Principles

Simplicity

The best-looking logo is the simple ones. Simple logos are easier to remember. In this case, simple means it’s easy to comprehend in one glimpse. But keep in mind not to make it too simple. Your logo still need to have the right brand message. Choose the right font, shape and details.

Timeless

A logo can be redesigned after some range of time. But if you keep changing the logo, audience will have difficulties to remember your actual logo, or worse, your actual brand. Try to make a timeless logo, not too ‘vintage’ but also not too ‘futuristic’ to be useful from time to time.

source: Logos-World.net

Versatile

An effectively good logo is a versatile or flexible logo. The logo has to be available to use in various medium, from digital to printed medium. To help you out, here are some general questions that need to be checked in logo designing:

  • Is the logo will still look good if it’s printed in black and white?
  • How will the logo looks like when its color is inverted (dark colors into light colors, and vice versa)?
  • Will the logo still look interesting and easy to understand when it’s printed in a small paper to a big billboard?
source: Looka

Relevant

Who is your actual audience? Are they children between 1 to 5 years old? Or young adults between 20 to 30 years old? You need to know the answers, because a perfect logo for each company’s target market will be varied. You also need to know what kind of service you offer. For example, when offering a logo to a same educational foundation, the logo for kindergarten level and high school level is obviously different.

source: kindpng

Unique

The last logo-making principle is unique. A unique logo can help a brand to stand out from their competitors. By being unique, your brand will be easier to be recognized.

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Some Tips in Logo Designs

Know your brand well

Like it was said before, each brand has different target markets. Your logo needs to be matched with the brand audience. You also need to understand everything about your brand. What is your brand values? What is your brand tone? What kind of image you want to display from your brand logo?

Choose the right design style

When you already understand your brand well, now it’s time to choose the appropriate design style for the logo. Some styles you can use for your logo designs are:

  • Classic, to show a trusted brand image.
  • Retro, to give a nostalgic impression.
  • Modern or minimalistic, to give a simple and fresh design.

Pay attention to your competitors

One of logo design principles is to be different or unique. How to design a logo that fulfill this principle? One quick way is to research about competitors’ logos. Choose different font and colors, also make a unique shape so that your brand logo will look more stand out.

Choose the right color

Choose the right color combination for your logo. Too much colors or a too much contrast color combination will make your logo difficult to comprehend. You can go either with one strong color, or two matching colors. Analog and complementary colors can be a good color combinationt trick. Analog colors are colors that are side-by-side in a color wheel, while complementary colors are those with opposite positions in color wheel.

source: CreativePro Network

Tools for Logo Designs

Logo design can be made in graphic design applications like CorelDRAW or Adobe Illustrator. But for easier use, there are some logo generator available online. Here are some website recommendations:

  • WIX Logo Maker
  • Squarespace Logo Maker
  • Canva Online Logo Maker
  • Adobe Spark Logo Maker

By:

Hello! My name is Lois, I live in Jogjakarta, Indonesia. I am a tattoo artist and I also love sewing and making needleworks. I also do watercolor painting and illustrations.

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