Regardless of whether you’re a one-man start-up just beginning to launch your first business or are a successful brand planning for your future growth, you need a brand logo.
The logo you create or choose for your brand is a type of visual signature, which instantly allows people to recognise your products and services, build your brand identity, and provide a glimpse of what you do at a glance.
A strong, impactful brand logo is vital to reinforcing your brand’s tone of voice and style, and attracting buyers – but a bad logo will have exactly the opposite effect, and can have a direct negative impact on how well you do.
However, creating or commissioning a brand-new logo for your business or enterprise can be time consuming and challenging, which means it is easy to make mistakes along the way. If you want to make sure you avoid the pitfalls when it comes to creating your brand logo and producing a logo that you love and that your prospects will love too, read this list of six mistakes to avoid first!
Your logo is too complex
A simple logo is a memorable logo – intricate designs that look like modern art might be pretty, but they won’t stand out as well as a crisp, clear, simple design, not will they get your message across if everyone is too enthralled with your artwork to wonder what it’s for.
The perfect logo is one that people can recognise instantly, describe effectively to others, and sketch out in a couple of seconds with a pencil.
Your logo isn’t distinctive enough
A company or designer’s worst nightmare is to design a great logo from scratch, put it out there – and then realise that it looks an awful lot like someone else’s logo. Not only will this place you at risk of infringing someone else’s trademark, but it will confuse your potential buyers, and irrevocably tie your fortunes up with that of the related logo.
Your brand logo design should be totally unique, but it should also be very distinctive in and of itself – with clear, sharp edges, an impactful colour scheme, and an instantly recognisable shape.
It’s not going to age well
Ever looked back at photographs of yourself from ten years ago and laughed at how poorly your hairstyle has aged, or how dated your clothes look? You don’t want to be doing the same thing in a few years with your brand logo.
If your logo is faddy or won’t stand the test of time, it’s not appropriate for use today. Steer clear of anything that isn’t going to age well, or that will soon look and feel out of date.
It isn’t designed to appeal to your core demographics
You should love your finished brand logo – but so should your core demographics. Your potential prospects should be at the forefront of your mind from inception to creation and beyond, and if your logo isn’t designed to appeal to your core demographics, it wont help you to reach and target them.
Something slick, modern and expensive-looking works well for luxury brands, whilst a good logo for a company that sells discounted products or is aimed to appeal to people on lower incomes should look rather different.
Your logo isn’t appropriate for your business
Your brand logo sets the tone of voice for your business, and should generate positive feelings about it in the people that view it, as well as ideally giving a hint as to what you do.
For instance, a fun, light-hearted and childlike logo will be perfect to sell toys or games – but if you’re selling something intended for adults, such as dating content via the popular TopOffers Affiliate Network, you need a logo that will instantly appeal to your potential buyers and immediately give them the right idea about your brand.
It’s plain ugly
Not only does your logo need to be appropriate for your business, be easy to recognise and be able to stand the test of time, but it has to be attractive as well. If your logo is ugly or unappealing – due to your colour choices, design, or any other element – it can have a real and tangible impact on your business, and not in a good way.
Additionally, it is really important to use focus groups and get as many opinions as possible about the logo designs you are considering – to help you to identify any problems with the logo, such as if it looks like something else from a certain angle, or immediately generates a lukewarm or negative response in the people that see it.
Taking this extra time at the start will help you to avoid all of these issues coming up later on, when you’ve already spent a lot of money and effort rolling out your branding.
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