Human beings’ love for creating an air of mystery through the use of symbols has not changed much. That is why brands use logos – to create a riveting visual representation of their brands. 

But a logo is not going to be a random symbol that you create in a hurry. It would be a depiction of what your brand does, your brand’s ideals, your services, or even your business heritage.

Logo design matters because 42% of consumers judge the personality of a brand from its logo. So, your logo will be a strong identifier of your brand. And it shows the target audience whether it is a brand relevant to them. Therefore, you do not want to make a hasty decision there. So, in this blog, we’ll talk about brand logos. And the way to come up with ideas for them.

Coming Up With Ideas for Brand Logos

However, there is one big question that continues to daunt brands around the world, “how do you come up with killer ideas for brand logos?”. After all, when you think you have the best logo design in mind you might face some challenges –

• Some other brand uses a very similar concept 
• Your logo is either too simple or too vague 
• Elements in your logo do not exactly convey what your brand does 

Let’s simplify the process of coming up with logo design ideas for your brand in 3 easy steps – 

1. Accumulation of ideas for brand logos
2. Branding 
3. Creation of the actual logo 

We’ll probe a little into the ABCs of logo design for you –

Accumulation of Ideas for brand logos

Brainstorming the design concepts for your logo would be the most important step in logo design and it is also going to be the most time-consuming one. Hacking the art of brainstorming for your logo design becomes simpler with these little tips- 

Involve all the right people 

A brand is nothing without the people behind the name. Involve all the stakeholders when you brainstorm for logo design ideas. The more diverse your team, the more productive these brainstorming sessions will be. 

People from sales, accounting, marketing, and other departments might all have a different take on your brand itself, and therefore your logo design. All these will be interesting perspectives to capture.

Like inputs from stakeholders, inputs from your customers can also be valuable in logo design. A logo design that resonates with your target customers will make the most impact. It will also be the kind of design that stays in your customers’ minds. 

To gather customer insights for logo design, you can conduct polls or ask for opinions on your Instagram Stories. From symbols to color schemes you can obtain a lot of ideas from the actual people for whom you build your brand.

Kimp Tip: Design thinking helps businesses understand their users better and create designs that are truly customer-focused. Even though your logo belongs to your business, it would also appear at every single touchpoint where your user interacts with your business. Involve a diverse team for design inputs and provide your requirements to a professional graphic design team like Kimp and you will have a logo that shines. 

Organize all your ideas 

Remember, there is no bad idea when it comes to design. So, write down every little idea you can think of. What’s even more important than documenting all your ideas is doing it in an organized way. Put together a moodboard. This can capture everything from the minutes of your brainstorming sessions to the visual inspirations you have for your logo design. 

Instead of a random jumble of words, organize them in lists or bubble charts or flowcharts, or any other visual representation that will streamline your inputs. Even rough sketches can be documented so that all your ideas are in one place. Organizing your ideas clearly will make it easier to create a design brief for your logo. 

Organizing these ideas will make it easier to create your design brief for the logo design. Your design brief will have details like the colors, symbols, and visual elements that should or should not be part of your logo design. If you have specific typography styles in mind, this will also be part of the design brief. 

Look for inspiration 

If you do not have any idea in mind, you can always look for inspiration. Make sure that you look for logo design inspiration from businesses of all sizes. See how brands connect these designs with their brands and brand personalities. 

Logo design ideas that work for one brand might not necessarily work for another. After all, a lot depends on all your supporting marketing visuals as well. When you have a great logo but your marketing designs do not make an impact, the logo alone cannot move mountains. So, after gathering inspiration with respect to the design, spend a lot of time optimizing the idea for your brand. And for your target audience. 

So, when you do look for inspiration, compare your competitors’ logos and the logos that are popular in your industry. You can also browse through logo design portfolios on the internet to see what kind of symbols and color schemes businesses similar to yours have used. 

If you need a fresh perspective on logo designing and if you are curious about the trending designs, do check out some of the logo designs by Kimp. 

In the end, respect the thin line between inspiration and intellectual property violation. You do not want your brand’s logo to end up looking very similar to the logo of another brand. 

Branding

Having the best logo ideas in one place will not be enough if you do not know whether these ideas are aligned with the persona of your brand. 

Of course, branding goes beyond your logo design but your logo design will give it the strong foundation it needs. To be sure that your logo fits your brand, here are some questions to ask yourself. 

What kind of products or services do you offer? 

Answering this question will give direction to your logo design. Especially when it comes to choosing the pictorial elements in your logo. When you design based on what you offer, finding the right symbols or illustrations feels so much simpler. 

For example, if you offer photography services, what kind of symbols will you use in your logo? A camera right? But so will all other businesses in your industry. So, try to get creative. Incorporate illustrations or add a symbol of a camera within the negative space in your logo. 

Here is an example. Notice the creative incorporation of the lens symbology within the letter “o”. These are ways in which you can add your creative flair to make your logo look unique. 

Kimp Tip: Instead of using elaborate symbols that complicate your logo, use simple manipulations of fonts or negative spaces. This way you will have a minimalistic logo that still conveys the message. 

Want to create such simple yet stunning brand logos? Get in touch with the Kimp team today. 

How will you describe your brand?

When your brand is new, customers will still not have formed an opinion about it. And during these early stages, your logo should be a reflection of how you perceive your brand. When you manage to convey this message in your logo design, you can also shape how your customers perceive your brand. 

To put it in simple words, can you come up with statements or words that best describe your brand? These would be valuable inputs to add to the mood board for logo design. You can target a design that captures the essence of these words or statements that best describe your brand. That would be an effective way to shape your brand image from the early stages. 

What are your brand ideals? 

Designs based on your products and services will be a good place to start. But then you should remember that there will be so many other businesses out there that offer similar products. So, how is yours different? To answer this you should know your brand ideals. In other words, you should define what your brand stands for. 

For example, if you own a restaurant, you might probably include food-related symbology in your logo. But there might be hundreds of restaurants in the city. All with unique logos. So, how do you make your design catchy? Capture that one unique trait of your restaurant. 

This could be something that’s unique about your services. Or about the kind of menu you cater to. For example, if your restaurant only uses farm fresh vegetables in the food preparation, it shows that you support the local farmers. Or if your restaurant focuses on using sustainable cutlery your environment-friendly approach would be an aspect that sets your restaurant apart. 

Creating a logo that reflects your brand’s ideals would be a way to set you apart from your competitors. From the fonts to symbols every little detail in your logo has a specific role to play. The key is to understand these roles and make them work for your brand’s message.

What would be your logo’s emotion? 

A good logo is not just good design. It is also the relevant emotion of a brand. 

We’ll give you an example to explain this. Take a look at the logo of Tostito’s, a popular brand offering tortilla chips and dips.

The logo, on the whole, looks happy, don’t you agree? The brand is mostly about chips and other party snacks. Can you see how the brand managed to capture the happy vibes of a party with its happy-looking logo? 

The colors used and the typeface, both have a strong role to play in invoking this emotion. So, when you make the most of color psychology and stimulate the right response, your logo shines. 

Where will you use your brand logo? 

There is a common misconception that this question comes in the later stages of marketing but the truth is you need to explore this question right when you create your logo design. 

Intuitive design foresight ensures that your brand’s visual elements are all synchronous. And this will help in shaping your brand identity slowly but steadily. 

And this involves considering how your logo will look in different places. For example, a logo that looks good on flat surfaces might not necessarily have the same impact when printed on something like a coffee mug. You might have to vary the scale in this case. And the design should not take a hit when the logo is scaled. The details should not be lost. 

Or if you plan to use the logo on a neon store sign, the legibility cannot be compromised. To avoid all this, ensure that your logo design is versatile. Visualize the design on all anticipated surfaces to be sure about the design. 

The type of logo design you choose, the fonts, colors, and the size of the logo are all a few elements that determine how your logo looks on different surfaces. 

Creation of the Actual Logo 

Having the best logo ideas that are aligned with your brand is not enough. You need to implement them to make your logo work for your brand. Now, when it comes to converting your logo design ideas into an actual logo, you have the below three options.  

1. Do it all yourself  

If outsourcing your logo design is still not in your mind, you have two choices – design your logo yourself or hire a designer for your team. 

Create a logo yourself 

Well, there are tools today, some free and some paid, where you can design a logo from scratch or even from existing templates. Before we tell you whether this would be a good idea, here’s a quick question. 

Did you know that 60% of the Fortune 500 companies use combination logos?. Now, what is a combination logo? It is a logo that incorporates both symbols and letters. If you need to know more about the different types of logos that are commonly used by brands around the world, do check out this other blog where we talk about the most popular types of logos in detail. 

Were you aware that brand logos can be of so many types? Expertise in design concepts and knowledge of design trends would be the perks of letting professionals handle your logo design. 

Work with an in-house resource/team

Some brands choose to hire an in-house designer/team as this lets them be fully in control of their designs. But there is the additional payroll added to the budget and the cost of licensing all the essential design tools and resources to support the designer. 

If you dig deeper, you will realize that outsourcing your designs will be a more cost-effective option than hiring an in-house graphic designer. 

2. Spend on a one-time design service 

To meet one-time design requests there are two options- working with independent designers or a design firm. 

Approach a freelance logo designer 

It is easy to hire freelance designers online. You also have the option to look into their previous work, client testimonials, and other aspects before you sign the contract. 

But remember that, when you work with a single designer, especially for something as critical as a logo, there are risks involved. All the money you invest would be futile if the designer you hire does not exactly understand and meet your logo design requirements. 

Pick a graphic design service company

As your logo will represent your brand almost everywhere, you would definitely want the help of experts in the field. When you choose a design service company, you get to work with experienced designers with access to the best design tools. In this case, you are not relying on an individual but a team of designers. But then, there are two concerns – 

• Services of reputed design firms might be expensive, especially for startups and small businesses 
• There is a design contract that imposes limits on the revision requests and other aspects of collaboration which might be difficult to understand sometimes.

3. Choose unlimited graphic design services 

So, when you choose to do the logo design yourself or hire a one-time design service what are the limitations? 

• The need for a huge budget to create a logo 
• Rigid design contracts make the collaboration slightly difficult for small to medium-sized businesses 

A graphic design subscription will be the secret to overcoming these challenges and creating the perfect logo for your brand. In fact, you will be able to get a host of other graphic designs at the cost of designing a logo alone. 

Unlimited graphic design companies like Kimp assign a dedicated team to handle your graphic designs. You can easily furnish your design brief to this team and obtain the logo that strengthens your brand. Along with this, you also get unlimited revisions. So, you can be sure that your logo is exactly as you pictured in your mind. 

Evaluating Your Final Logo Design 

After the above 3-steps in the logo design process, you finally have your logo in front of you. Ensure that you do a final round of evaluation before you actually launch your logo. For this, you will have to go back to the first step. 

• Remember those ideas you put together after your brainstorming sessions with your team? Look back into those ideas. Identify if any of the important details you had planned for your logo were not incorporated. 
• The insights you gathered in the branding evaluation stage would be the most important ones to revisit. Look into the questions you had earlier asked yourself while shortlisting the logo designs. With this, check if your logo answers all the important branding questions. Do you have a logo that conveys the intended brand message? Does the logo design trigger the right emotions and communicate with your audience? If not, you might want to make small revisions. Do not worry, in this stage, small changes like altering the typeface or color schemes might be enough to fine-tune the results. 
• Look at the logo from an outsider’s perspective to see if the design is easy to understand. When your brand itself is new you would not want to present your audience with a cipher to crack.
• Take the opinion of people from different age groups to see if there are different interpretations of your logo design. You might not want a logo with controversial inferences. 

And with these little observations, your logo is finally ready for the big reveal! 

If you are wondering if your current logo is good enough for your brand, check out Kimp’s blog on the difference between good and bad logo designs. 

Create Perfect Brand Logos With Kimp

Whether you are designing a new logo or looking for a quick redesign, be sure that you create something that resonates with your brand’s personality. And to be sure that your logo also keeps up with the design trends that customers love, get in touch with Kimp’s design team today.