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10 Essential Logo Design Guidelines & Brand Style Guide

Bhushan Lele

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Jul 08, 2021
10 Essential Logo Design Guidelines & Brand Style Guide

Your logo is the first impression of your business to your clients. Itโ€™s a powerful asset to your companyโ€™s brand and plays a vital role in the success of your business.

Consistency is the key when creating a memorable brand. Your brand will stick to your clientsโ€™ minds because itโ€™s defined by the repetition of the same images, colors, fonts, and logo.

If you want to create a consistent brand, you must begin by developing a brand style guide.

Here are some of the essential logo design guidelines & brand style guide that may serve as an inspiration or guide for your next branding project:

1. Lay Down the Foundations

Designing your business logo is not a simple task. It requires a lot of skills, experience, and paramount knowledge. Foundation is vital since it determines how the final product will look like.

Here are some of the things you need to know when laying down your foundation:

Know Your Brand

Knowing your brand is very important if you want to create a logo that is so real to your brand. You need to ask questions such as, what are your goals? Your mission? Your brand story? How do you want people to feel and react after seeing your logo?

Also, you need to come up with some words that describe your brand perception. The words should be precise and straight to the point.

Brainstorm

Brainstorming allows you to think outside the box and bring new ideas to the outside world. It will help if you put down any idea you come up with, regardless of how silly it is.ย 

Wrong ideas translate to serious discussions that end up with great ideas. Also, choose the right time to brainstorm; that is when you are fresh because you will be more creative.

Here are some of the things you need to do when brainstorming:

  1. Start a Mood Board

    A mood board is a collection of images, pieces of text, materials, and other things that define and tell about your brand identity. It will act as a focal point of your brand identity when designing your logo. A mood board makes sure that your designer has a better concept of your vision and brand right from the beginning.

  2. Research Your Audience

    Put yourself in your clientsโ€™ shoes, and pretend that you are the target audience. List essential company qualities that you would intend to work with. Is it for fun or an edgy brand that challenges the status quo?

  3. Understand Competition

    Who are the best competitors in the market? What is working for them? Apply what is working in designing your logo and ensure you remain focused on your brand. If you understand your competitors, you will have a great idea of how to reach your audience.

2. Choose an Appropriate Logo Type

Selecting the appropriate logotype is very crucial. Ideally, there are seven logotypes that you can select when designing your logo. You can choose the one that fits your companyโ€™s name or mix them to come up with something distinctive.ย 

Here are the common types of logos:

Lettermarks

These types of logos are ideal for companies with long names or names that are not easy to remember. Therefore, they are written in initial forms such as CNN, GM, or HP. However, itโ€™s good to know that these logotypes donโ€™t express what your company is all about.

Pictures & Symbols

These are iconographic images and symbols that are easy to identify and represent your brand. It involves representing your brand using symbols and pictures. You should select an image or symbol that brings a distinctive linkage to your brand.

Mascots

This is one of the fun but unique ways of adding personality to your brand. They include attractive, cartoonish texts that represent your business in an efficient and friendly way.

3. Getting Your Color Scheme Right

Different colors have various meanings. It is necessary to know the color you are selecting because colors attract specific actions, feelings, ideas, and emotions to your audience. For you to choose the right color for your company logo, you have to do the following:

Start by Confirming Your Goal

What is the companyโ€™s goal? You must fully understand or let your designer understand the companyโ€™s values, qualities, goals, mission, beliefs, brand attributes, and business. What do you want to achieve, and which ways will you use to attain your goals?

Understanding all these things will allow you to select the perfect color for your companyโ€™s logo. For instance, red symbolizes excitement, anger, and passion. Green is versatile and ideal for any brand.

 Yellow is friendlier and more accessible, while purple looks luxurious. Blue symbolizes maturity and trustworthiness, and itโ€™s a common choice to many.

If you want a sleek and luxurious logo, black is a perfect choice for you. Brown is suitable for masculine vintage and rugged logos, even if it sounds strange.

You can also combine different colors in your logo. These include analogous colors, complementary colors, and triadic colors.

4. Typography 101: Know Your Fonts

You need to select fonts that perfectly complement your logo. The fonts should feel genuine and honest to your brand. For instance, bold fonts are ideal for a serious tone, while rounded fonts are suitable if you want to create a friendly feel.

Here are the common font types that you can use to create a unique logo:

Serif Fonts

These fonts will give your companyโ€™s logo a classic and elegant look. They are more versatile, and itโ€™s a perfect choice for any excellent logo design.

Sans Serif Fonts

These fonts add a clean and contemporary look to your logo and are ideal for modern brands. They are a bit โ€œfeet,โ€ making them look sleek and straightforward.

Display Fonts

These fonts are eye-catching and stylish. They will give your logo a distinctive and attractive look that anyone will envy.

Script Fonts

These are reminiscent fonts. They will help you to make an individualistic logo.

5. Why Size Matters

Your logo will not only be used on your companyโ€™s website. It will serve various purposes, such as marketing on social media, branding on products, among other uses. Therefore, ensure the logo is scalable such that it can be reduced for smaller items like business pins and business cards to prevent it from losing legibility when itโ€™s scaled-down.

Besides, your logo should not look distorted when enlarged or scaled-down. After you have the design, you need to experiment at different sizes to ensure it makes sense at all sizes.

It should look presentable and good while on billboards, posters, small promotional items, or mobile devices. Try to tweak it for it to look great in a wide range of sizes. If your logo is not scalable, it will look unprofessional and rushed.

6. Create Balance

Balance is essential in logo design since most people perceive and envy a well-balanced design because itโ€™s more attractive and pleasing. Ensure there is a great balance between colors, graphics, and size in the entire logo.

You should remember that your logo represents your company to the whole world and is seen by many people, even great designers. A balanced design is the best and extraordinary approach to use.

7. Make it Your Own

Your logo should be unique and distinctive. Donโ€™t let it resemble or look almost similar to other logos. Ensure your logo is well associated with your brand and should be easy to identify and different from another companyโ€™s logo.

Here are some of the things you need to do to come up with a unique logo:

Think Different

You must distinguish yourself using distinct styles so that your logo can stand out from your competitors. You need to be a little bit creative and innovative if you want your logo to be unique from others.

If you want to be different, try to break the design rules and take some risks. Try to implement different styles and see the one that works magic. You can try to combine colors until you come up with an original true design. Also, you can try to tweak your design until you get the correct one.

  1. Check for Plagiarism

    Even if you have checked your competitorsโ€™ logo to โ€œstealโ€ an idea that is working well, ensure you donโ€™t copy another style or design. You can check for plagiarism to ensure itโ€™s not used somewhere else.

8. What are Other Logo Designs Performing Well?

You need to find other logo designs that are performing great to develop excellent logo ideas. Some places where you can get logo inspiration include big brands, social media, design blogs & magazines, your competitors, your own brand story, and friends and relatives.

The following are some of the things you can include while creating your logo:

The Double Entendre

Your logo can have a double meaning to ensure your branding has different interpretations but the same primary meaning.

Creative Typography

You can use creative typography to create a unique and perfect logo for your company. Some of these include retro and vintage feel, heavy fonts, bright colors, and 3d effects in typography design.

Coat of Arms

A coat of arms will help you to show your brandโ€™s personality. They will leave a long-lasting message and impression of your company to clients.

These logotypes inspire confidence in people more quickly since they comprise noble elements. There are thousands of coats of arms that you can use to design your logo.

9. Keep it Simple (and Flexible)

A simple log will be easy to recognize and remember. You should always follow the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) rule from the beginning in your designing process, whether you are brainstorming ideas or drawing sketches.

This is because of the following:

A Great Idea, Utterly Misunderstood

You can come up with an excellent idea, but if itโ€™s too detailed, many will not recognize or misunderstand it. Try to implement as many things as you can until you create something basic and simple but powerful. Who knows if your simplest idea might turn out to be the best?

  1. Flexibility

    a. Flexibility
    You need to come up with a flexible logo as much as possible because it will appear on various platforms. Test your logo on a wide variety of options to ensure it looks great. This is because your logo might look good on a website but look bad on a t-shirt or letterhead.

10. Publish your Work

After taking numerous hours to create your logo and you are satisfied with its look, itโ€™s time to show the whole world your work. Now you can publish your work, but you should not expect instant success. However, you should not be discouraged since success doesnโ€™t come once; it takes time.

The most accessible place to first publish your logo is on social networks because you can easily make it change. Ensure you remain consistent in all your communications so that your visitors can quickly develop a connection with your brand.

Remember to tell your clients that you have a new logo and explain the reasons for changing the logo. If you make some changes to the existing logo, show them the logo evolution, and explain the new changes.

Building Brand Recognition

Anytime you are designing a logo, the main intention or purpose is to build brand recognition. The big question is, how can you do that? There are several ways to build your brand recognition, but they differ from one instance to another.

If you want to create a recognizable logo, try to combine various elements discussed above, such as color, style, size, originality, and typography. If you donโ€™t include all these elements, you will end up with a poor-quality final design.

The above are the ten essential logo design guidelines and brand style guide for creating an excellent logo for any brand. First, you need to come up with as many ideas as possible and then narrow them down.

Try to be more innovative and creative as much as you can to ensure your logo is distinctive and unique. Use appropriate colors or combine different colors that drive specific feelings and emotions to your audience.

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