A successful logo provides an instant visual communication of your brand and it is often the first thing your customers see. With this in mind, we’ve put together our 6 golden rules of logo design

1. Be unique

We always listen to what the client is after and we do this by building up a mood board of your company and discussing in depth the direction you would like to take the logo in. We then look at the competition in your particular field and choose a route to go down that is not predictable or cliché. When asked to design a logo for Freelance Chef Patrick Gilmour it would have been all too easy for us to hark back to the classic chef’s hat but instead we wanted to show the journey from “field to fork”. The finished product was an elegant icon that had the added benefit of looking like a glass, which neatly tied the whole meal concept together.

2. Simplicity is key

Take a moment to think of all the big brands that have successful icons. Nike could have demanded runners or athletic equipment in their logo; instead they went for a big tick. Simple. Similarly, McDonald’s could have requested burgers or fries to take centre stage in their logo; instead they went for the iconic yellow M on a red background. Believe us when we say, less is most definitely more! A complex logo can be difficult to reproduce and remember when it’s scaled down it’s going to lose a lot of its impact.

3. Choose colour carefully

Your logo has to work in black and white foremost. When picking your palette of colours, remember to keep it simple (there’s that word again!) We recommend just one or two colours at the most. Think about the brand you are trying to convey. An outdoors company, for example, may want earthy tones like greens or brown whereas a corporate company could opt for a muted palette of navy’s and greys. Colour associations can play a role in the decision making process as well. Red can be a very emotive colour, conjuring up images of fire and passion while in contrast blue is a lot more subdued. We always make sure to stick to Pantone references when it comes to choosing your brand colours, this guarantees a consistent reproduction and eliminates the wide variations of shades that can often be delivered by different printers.

4.Typography matters

There’s an endless amount of fonts out there and sometimes it can be difficult to decipher just where to start. We, as designers, all have our favourites but we realise it’s crucial to research our clients company before we choose the fonts that we think set the tone best. A serif typeface can look more authoritative whilst a sans serif can give a modern and clean vibe. It often strikes a nice balance to have a mixture of the two between the business name and the tagline. The font can also be modified to include an icon, like the one we created below for outdoor clothing specialists GearPest.

5. Flexibiliy

The visual elements of your logo can be used to create other marketing resources such as stationery, signage and your website. When we are creating a logo we think about how it is going to work on both landscape and portrait formats and we always supply you with variations to choose from. All our logos are created in vector formats, which gives you the flexibility of using it across a range of platforms, scaled up to as big as you like without loss of resolution.

6. Longevity

And finally once we’ve completed your logo we don’t want to be revisiting it again, at least not for a very, very long time. That’s not to say we haven’t enjoyed having you as a client (I’m sure we have!) but hopefully it’s because the design we’ve provided you with will stand the test of time as it doesn’t include any gimmicks or fads. Then we can get onto helping you with the next stage in your marketing journey… long term brand management.