Key concepts
Logo design
5 tips to create a logo with the bare minimum
A logo is one of the most important aspects of marketing and is crucial for a strong visibility and identification of your brand. Therefore, creating it it’s very important, and, regardless that you can change it with time, it is best to create a great version of it from its very beginning.
You can go to a professional anytime for it, yet if you fancy the digital art and would like to give it a try, let’s see some steps to do it by yourself:
1. Study the market
Look online for various logos and study their design. What colours do they use, how the fonts look combined, are there images, just letters, what’s the design per whole?
What’s the connection between the logo and the brand/company, respectively what they sell? Tip: note down the things you like and those that you don’t so to get inspiration.
2. Choosing a font
If you find fonts that you like, there is an easy way to identify what has been used. Save the logo to your computer, and go to www.myfonsts.com/WhatTheFont. Upload the photo there so that the web can read the letters and give you the same or similar fonts.
With the font you liked the most, you can try it out with your text to see how it looks.
Once you decide on the font you like and want, there are various websites from where you can download the scripts for the fonts. Some have free usage even for commercial purposes, while some you need to buy.
Tip: check the conditions before using them officially (copyrights infringements)!
3. Texts and images
Likewise with the fonts, there are various websites from where you can download (free or paying for them) countless images, photos or illustrations. Many can allow you to change colours and make adjustments in vector extensions so you can adapt it afterwards for your business. In the previous article we gave a big list of websites as resources.
Tip: the text you choose can be the exact domain of your website (which is very indicated to be as close as possible to being keywords).
4. Colours and visual look
You may already have a preferred colour or combination of colours.Once you have the image and text created, see what colours you like as combinations, yet take into consideration that it should fit as well the whole idea behind your brand. For example, if you want to have an environmental business, perhaps shades of green are more suitable than red ones.
Go with the colour complementary wheel that is based on the main colours (red, yellow, blue) and the complementary ones, which are combinations of the 3 main colours (orange, green, purple. The complementary colours are in various shades and while adding white or black, you create even more secondary colours (pink, brown, navy etc.).
You don’t need to be a colour expert, yet by choosing colours that oppose themselves on the wheel, you will get a good contrast for texts and be catchy for images.
We recommend using the white background as it gives the most elegant visual aspect, yet if you decide to go for borders or full background colours, make sure you take into consideration the complementary of the colours.
Tip: Choose colours (that can be differentiated when reduced to 2 colours) that would make the logo look good as well in black-white, black, white versions. You never know where you would need these other versions on your materials.
5. Compare and get feedback
Check how your final product looks compared to the ones of your competitors. Does yours transmit the idea of your business? Does it look good? Would it attract the view, yet within a positive way?
Get feedback from friends, close people (yet mind their opinion to be objective and for real) and ask around people what they think about it.
Tip: you can even try to identify potential future clients that could give their impression on your logo.