In huge pool of competition where literally there is a rush to impress & achieve customers, logo becomes an inevitable element of a company’s branding to distinguish itself in the market. When competition is the key factor in driving markets, brand becomes the keyword. People prefer brands over non-brands. Being a brand reduces customers’ price sensitivity increases its sale-ability.

This is why you must have a logo that has uniqueness, gets attention, gets recognition and has ability to be a standalone branding element.

My experience & years of research in branding enables me to present you with 7 key ideas or say characteristics that together creates spellbinding logo designs and an unforgettable brand identity. Hope you enjoy.

Lesson #1- Keep it simple

While everything is complex in this era of competition, simplicity just outperforms complexity. Having one to two singular elements in your logo makes your logo design finely distinguishable. However, at the same time, it puts you to a big challenge of creating a unique identity with easily recognizable shapes.

Apple’s simple distinguishable logo  

Instead of presenting your illustration and drawing skills, logo design is more a test of your creativity and presentation skill. Sometimes a single good image can present two different things or even more at the same time. As a logo designer, it’s your responsibility to sense it.

Lesson #2- Symbolize the belief & emotions

Remember the famous logo of Walt Disney Pictures? The fairy castle in background of typo graphed “Walt Disney”? It straightly connects you to time of your childhood when you heard tales of fairies & wonderlands.

 

Logos that connect people with emotions increase the chance of customer loyalty with that brand. It is very simple to hack the consumer psychology with such logos. That’s why most of medical logos are light-blue (symbolizing the wellness) & financial logos are green (symbolizing the wealth).

 

Another example is LG’s logo showing a winking smiley. Even tagline says that “Life’s good”. Doesn’t it inspire a positive vibe in customer that the brand is consumer friendly. Rather than giving preference to your own brand voice, especially in consumer oriented services, keeping logo designs psychologically attaching, can pay you with higher customer loyalty.

Lesson #3- Connect with the audience demography

Another factor in world’s most appealing logos is connection with audience demography. This is somehow different from emotional aspect as you add design elements that appeals particular group of people based on their age, sex, location etc.

For example, see the logo of famous toy brand LEGO. Lego has simple text logo with fonts resembling to hand drawn fonts and it uses vibrant yellow, black, white & red colors those are found in most of children toys.

 

Nicklodean also has childish logo that has squashy fonts with orange mud splash like background that appeals their target audience i.e. children

 

Another such example is logo of “Dove” that produces cosmetic products for girls. As the golden is color of ornaments & feminine, they have a logo with golden dove and soft fonts which clearly appeals women.

 

Lesson #4- Make it time-proof

However, it is quite impossible to predict the future, some sort of designs just need slight retouch to keep up with latest trends and to save the brand identity from looking outdated. Simplicity can be the most obvious way to make your logo design timeless. For example, Nike logo.

 

Another thing worth discussing here is use of 2D versus 3D. While 3D designs make your logo look more realistic and more appealing, a good logo that stands the taste of time is preferably 2D. As a result, more than 70% of brands in world have 2D logos with plain colors.

As suggested by Suree Woong, timeless logo designs have following characteristics

– No more than 3 colors

– Simple shapes

– No fancy font

– No gradient (i.e. plain color)

– No image in logo &

– Good contrast

Another good example of timeless logo is the Olympic logo where simply five different colored circles are connected with each other.

 

Lesson #5- Appealing v/s unique

It is very hard while designing logos to control your temptation for a beautiful logo design. What i want to say is, sometimes being unique in your logo design can be much more beneficial than being beautiful and similar to other famous brands in your industry.

For example, look at following image showing brands with similar logos. Don’t you think it could be better if these brands had really distinguishable identity over the other?

 

Lesson #6- Don’t underestimate significance of color

While many of the world famous brands use plain black and white colors in their logos (i.e. no colors), most of brands with distinguishable design appeal have their own set of colors and shades to express their brand values.

For example, IT giant, Google has a logo with simple fonts with color pattern that is broken by green color of the character “l”. It symbolizes the playfulness and unconventional attitude of company. When most of IT company logos are limited to blue, black and green, Google has a colorful logo depicting that it doesn’t believe in established rules and thinks beyond conventions.

 

Another example is Pepsi, which has two color logo with blue and red signifying their support to America while world war. Could it have been that much good if it was in black & white?

 

Lesson #7- Use every pixel

To make your logo more evocative, you can embrace the negative space and background area of your design. Apart from making use of negative space, such kind of designs also add a bit of irony and make image evocative. Smartly utilized design space makes it more easily memorable and distinguishable.

For example, most of people know Federal Express courier services which has a logo with texts FedEx. Have you ever noticed the arrow formed between “E” & “x” in the design? It smartly integrates their message of dynamic and speedy courier service without adding a bit of complexity in the design. The designer just has smartly used the redundant pixels of design and the result? It’s majestic.

 

WWF also has a smart logo making good use of background pixels in the design.

 

At YourDesignPick, we have been doing logo designs since more than half dozen years & we are preferred design partners of 5,000+ clients. Our designers are addicted to colors, shapes and innovation. So if you are planning a smart new logo design for your company to lift it up to the “Brand” status, contact YourDesignPick right now. Our design packages are quite affordable and delivery time just 48 hours.