How do I create a logo for my business that sells?

The importance of a great logo cannot be underestimated; it’s a sign of confidence and the most important symbol for customers to identify your business.

But here’s something worth your attention: Not every logo gets noticed. The vanishing attention spans of consumers has made it difficult for brands to get attention with basic logo design. As a result, it’s becoming more important for brands to learn and implement logo design best practices.

Designing great logos takes a little more time than one would think. There’s no set process for designing one and it comes down to preference in most instances. In our blog, we discuss the best practices to logo design can definitely be enlightening. Here are a few of our favorite pointers.

1. Choose the Right Color

University of Loyola, Maryland, published research that showed color can increase brand recognition by 80 percent. The underlying reason being there is a strong correlation between emotional responses and color, implying that the selected color will determine how your brand is viewed.

For instance, luxury brands like Michael Kors and Chanel use silver, gold, black, and white to promote a sophisticated image. Restaurants like Pizza Hut and Burger King utilize red in logo design to simulate hunger.

When it comes to logo design, let this be a guide for the selection of your color palette. Also, consider your brand’s personality. What virtues does it highlight? Innovation, intuitiveness, speed? Knowing your focus can be significant to refining your color selection.

Multiple colors can be used if you want to emphasize audience diversity or product variety. Don’t shy away from experiments.

2. Tell a Story

Almost every other brand has a story behind its logo. If it was a mere pattern of fonts or colors, the audiences won’t be able to understand the message a brand is trying to convey. The goal of most brands with logo design is to incorporate a story that helps people instantly recognize and memorize the brand.

That’s what Milton Glaser did with the “I Love New York” logo. In an interview, he stated that when consumers first witness a logo, they should get its meaning (he believes that the act between seeing and understanding is crucial).

Storytelling will likely always be a crucial part of logo design, especially when the goal is to create a logo that stands the test of time.

Remember the logo used for Sydney 2000 Olympics? Here it is again:

The challenge was to avoid quaint Australian clichés when it came to storytelling, namely, the kangaroos and koalas. The individual that designed this logo instead used an image of a running athlete, telling people what the human aspect of the Olympic Games stands for. The athlete is also holding a running torch which trails a line of smoke.

A great way to incorporate a story is to think about the emotion you want the logo to communicate and then include details in logo design to support it. Make sure the story effectively conveys your ethics, values and identity.

3. Aim for Simplicity

A simple logo design is the clearest way to present your brand to your target audience. Simplicity helps people to not only actively remember your logo, but also memorize the value behind your brand. Also, simple logos are easy to tweak if required while maintaining the brand’s personality.

When in logo design consideration, it is vital to keep things simple. Siegel + Gale conducted a survey of 3,000 respondents in the UK and US to try to get some actual stats on what makes a logo memorable. The outcome revealed that simplicity sticks with people.

The most memorable logos belonged to McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Nike, and Apple. All these brands have fairly simple logos: there’s no extra noise or clutter. Also, even if the participants didn’t know of a pool of brands, simpler logos proved the most memorable.

The survey found that people were 13% more interested in simpler logos than complicated ones, and these logos were 6% more likely to make a brand appear as unique compared to its competitors.

What does this mean? If you’re considering logo design, use a combination of simple font, color, object and negative space to create a simple logo.

The availability of options like Spaces logo maker means you don’t even have to be a graphic designer. Today, brands can just type their brand name into a logo generator, choose an icon, choose a font, and play around with different options. Therefore, you can create simple logos without having to download a software or go to design school.