PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Branding - Reasons to Invest in a Professional Logo Design

Your logo is the most identifiable part of your business. Think about some of the world’s most iconic logos that can be recognised in an instance. The Apple logo, Nike’s Swoosh or McDonalds yellow ‘M’. A logo is such an important part of your business that it is really important to get it right.

A well-designed logo will be memorable, helping your customers remember your brand. Shapes and colours are far easier for the human brain to process and memorise than words alone. By simply looking at a logo, we make judgements about that business or service. If a company looks too expensive, we may avoid it, likewise if the logo looks like the type of company we want to be associated with, we will engage with that company for its products and services.

Your logo helps to create a strong brand identity which in turn can convert people into loyal customers. Therefore, a professionally designed logo is vital to a business and the following tips will help to illustrate why this is important.

1. Create a good first impression

Your logo appears in the header of your website, on your business cards & stationery and maybe even on t-shirts or vehicles. This symbol represents your business, services or products. If your customer is not impressed with your logo, they may not be impressed with your company. Your logo needs to be unique, be able to stand out from the crowd and more importantly be better than your competitors.

2. Reflect the nature of your business

A professional designer will work with you to understand your business, its core values, your target audience and how you wish your business to be represented in the marketplace. The colours and images used should also align with your business and the products & services you deliver. This in turn will help your customers understand the message you wish to portray. This crucial research needs to be carried out and fully understood before any logo design is actioned.

3. The foundation for a strong brand identity

A good logo design is the basic foundation block on which your brand identity sits. A logo cannot be considered as being your brand, as brand identity is a much bigger part of your business. A logo is however an iconic pictorial representation of your brand, making your business more identifiable to your customers. A professionally designed logo will help tie your brand together and allow you to move on to other areas of branding such as creating a website, marketing materials and even a corporate identity.

4. Should be scalable

These days it is important that your logo is not just designed for a business card or website, but that it can be used to promote your brand across all different types of media. As your business grows you may need to use your logo at different sizes from large scale formats such as exhibition stands, signage and advertising all the way down to small scale formats such as free gifts and corporate giveaways. Type or images which look balanced and work at a large scale, may become indistinguishable at a smaller scale. Therefore, a professional design will ensure that your logo can always be viewed at different scales, which may mean that 2 or 3 variations are produced at the same time as your original logo.

5. Can be used across all media

File formats are also important. Web designers will require different file formats to printers. Throughout the life of your logo, you will be asked for jpeg, eps, png, psd and even ai files, so having all these different formats available from the very start will make sure that your logo always appears at its best. Also, if your logo is in colour, a black & white version should also be produced for the instances where colour is not possible such as newspaper advertisements or personalised items.

First impressions matter and having a professionally designed logo to help support your business, create brand awareness and ultimately attract new customers makes it a worthwhile long-term investment.

Please note that the views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this article belong solely to the author, and not necessarily to any other group or individual. To ensure you are fully compliant with all current legislation, please take legal/professional advice and do not rely solely on the information provided in these articles.