Helpful Tips for a Top-Notch Business Logo Design
Making sure your business is ready for its first impression to the public. TuiSpace highly believes that your business logo design must be top-notch before its debut.
Your business logo must capture your customer’s curiosity. It should attract customers for the right reasons and not the wrong ones. It’s your welcome mat to your business as well as the key identifier. To achieve such a feat, your business logo design must be top-notch.
Check out these helpful tips to make your business logo design top-notch.
Characteristics of a Top-Notch Business Logo Design
A business’s branding and marketing strategy is key to its success. A marketing strategy, for example, may include door-to-door advertising, social media ads, and even TV commercials. All of these channels of marketing require a potential customer to know who, what, when, where, and how to contact that business. A business logo design is crucial to answer those questions. A logo shows who and what the business is and can even answer the where and the how depending on the design. These characteristics are important to do so.
a) Color
A strategic color scheme determines how conservative or loud a business wants to be. It also depends on the industry of the business. For a business owner in the design or artistic industries, a multi-colored logo is very relevant to the business logo design. A law firm or accounting firm will choose colors with more darker and singular tones. Examples of known color schemes is John Deere with the green and yellow and Google with the green, yellow, red, and blue. Color matters, but it’s only the beginning.
b) Shapes and Styles
Business logos are designed with shapes. Many have forms of circles, squares, triangles and more. Others are simply names, but have fonts with various types of curves, shapes, and styles. Shapes are crucial to being an appealing design to potential clients. Utilizing shapes with specific colors creates a winning business logo design strategy. Adidas is a great example of the shapes and lines being used in a business logo design.
In addition to shapes, font styles bring a business name to life. Some popular business names are logos that utilize font size and shapes. Nike with the checkpoint and italic blocked letters stands out as a leading brand. We will discuss Nike a little later, but other strong logos that come to mind are street wear brand Tussy with the a signature-type font and cable network giant CNN with the red attached letters.
c) Design that matches the business name
Designs that match the business name is a concept that may be difficult to understand at first. Well, Apple and Windows are prime examples of that. Apple is literally an apple with a bite in it and the Windows logo is, well, you guessed it, a window. Another logo that comes to mind is John Deere. The logo is a Deer. The interesting part of this type of logo is that the name and logo itself is
unrelated to the products being sold. Apple sells computers, Windows sells software, and John Deere sells tractors. This type of logo is known as “arbitrary” meaning it’s an actual word that has nothing to do with the products or services sold. These are in fact the strongest types of logos out there.
Logo, Name, and Tagline Go Hand in Hand
Previously we spoke about Nike and its simple check mark logo with a company name in italic blocked letters. The Nike business logo design is one of the most recognizable logos in the world. What took Nike over the top, however, was the tagline that goes hand in hand with the logo: “Just Do It.” The athletic brand is a powerhouse arguably due to the brand strength that started with the logo, name, and tagline together.
Nike’s example shows entrepreneurs that time and creative thought should go into a brand, which includes the logo, name, and tagline. By doing this, success increase due to high recognition by the customer.
Strategic Logo Placement is Critical
Logo placement may seem like an easy thing to accomplish. It’s definitely not hard to understand; however, the wrong placement can make a marketing piece or business card appear “off.” Here are some basic guidelines to follow.
Business Cards
Top left corner or top center are the best positions for a logo on a business card. Top left corner because we read left to right. The logo will be the first thing one sees when reading the card. Top center is also recommended because it appears as the center of the card. It creates a symmetrical appearance and provides a focal point for the reader.
Marketing Materials
Placement should always be top center to be the focal point of the pamphlet or flyer. Right below it should be the location, date, and time if an event or contact information if a business advertisement. The top corners are acceptable, but then the logo must be larger to keep the attention of the reader.
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- Official or Formal Materials
- Documents - logos for formal documents must always be top center in the header. This is a common practice for demand letters, company memos, press releases, and more.
- Email - business logos are always in the signature block of the sender’s email. One reason is because it isn’t the focal point of the communication; therefore, it needs to be secondary. Secondly, it’s the first thing one will see after reading the email. It’s great continuity of a company’s branding strategy and is a simple reminder to the reader of the business.
Online Platforms
your website, social media sites, Yelp, Google and Bing profiles, and other online platforms all share similar logo placement rules. It must be either your profile picture or cover image. The same is true for websites. The best logo placement practice for websites is the top left corner. Visit any brand - Adidas, Kohl’s, Amazon, McDonald’s - and you'll discover the logo is placed in the top left corner.
It may not seem important when building or setting up your online platforms, but knowing these best practices will go a long way for your business logo design.
File a Federal Trademark for Your Business Logo
Lastly, once you’ve finalized your business logo design, you need to file a trademark application. This needs to be done prior to all the other helpful tips to intact federal protections for your logo. To apply for a federal trademark for your business logo design, visit the United States Patent & Trademark Office to start your application and make sure you follow our
important instructions.
TuiSpace provides logo review, design, and marketing strategies. In addition, we can assist with your logo's trademark plan so you’re protected from others using it without permission.
Call today to set up your marketing strategy consultation.