Your business logo is the face of your company to your target audience. It’s often one of the first things that people picture when they think of your company: it’s placed on clothing, packaging, websites, and more. If your logo is poorly designed, off-brand, and doesn't accurately portray your service, people won’t take your company seriously. Your logo should portray your company’s branding, personality, offering, and vibe. If your company has a cheerful, comical vibe, your logo has the capacity to be playful. If you are a professional business, your logo should be clean and serious. Your audience will be able to tell if you just slapped an icon next to your company name for your logo. The effort you put into your brand design reflects the effort you’ll likely put into your clients and products.

What Your Logo Should Be

First off, your logo needs to represent your company’s branding, personality, offering, and vibe. People won’t connect your logo to your company if it's not aligned with your branding. Your colors, fonts, and logo placement need to be consistent so that people can recognize your brand wherever they see your logo. It also needs to reflect your company’s personality and vibe. You want to have a consistent brand message throughout your company. Marketing with consistency is key to increasing brand awareness and success.

Examples

Let’s take a look at some famous logos, and what makes them so well-designed:

Apple’s logo design is crisp and minimalistic. While it doesn’t feature a tech product, Apple was clever and used a literal apple for their logo. By using the color gray, their logo portrays a tech feel. Their company is so well-known that anyone thinks of Apple when they see the silver-gray logo.

Nike’s famous checkmark logo represents achievement and having gotten something done. Nike is the name for the Greek goddess of victory. Nike seeks to inspire success, and the checkmark portrays that something has been accomplished.

TikTok is a great example of another good logo: the music note. While people post much more than just dance videos now, it started with mainly dancing and music. The pink and blue colors above and below the note create a movement effect. This illustrates the importance of movement for their platform.

Design & Logos

In order to truly capture the essence of your brand in your logo, you need to take some time to think about your brand’s values, offering, and personality. Your logo should reflect your brand’s personality and energy. Understanding your vision for your company will help you design a logo that truly matches your brand. Sketch out several ideas and variations for a possible logo to find what designs capture your brand’s personality the best. The logo process includes many sketches and revisions, but that’s how you create one that truly represents your brand. There are three variations of logos that would be valuable for your business to have: an icon, a wordmark, and a combination. This will allow you to use your brand’s logo in several different ways without losing brand consistency.

In Summary

While branding includes a lot more than just a logo, your logo is what people often think of when your brand is mentioned. It’s important to put time and effort into understanding who your brand is, what you represent, your values, and your personality. All these characteristics play a factor in the design of your logo. If you think of these things when designing a logo, you will be able to create something that speaks to your brand, vibe, and values. This effort and consistency will increase customer trust and brand awareness.