Designing your Company Logo

A logo can be a powerful thing. Logos are used to create what marketing professionals call “brand recognition.” Take the Nike “swoosh”. When you see that logo, whether its on a T-shirt, tennis shoe, or pair of socks, you immediately associate it with Nike. A logo is the visual/graphic representation of your company’s identity, and is going to be with you a long time. You want to make sure that whatever you decide on is professional, functional, and aesthetically-pleasing. Think of it as your company avatar – an embodiment or personification of your company’s principles, style, and mission.

Some things to consider when designing your logo:

Tap your personal network — Before you go and drop large sums of cash on a professional designer, put out some feelers in your professional and social networks. You may be surprised to find out one of your friends has a background in graphic design.

Identify the key elements you wish to convey — What do you stand for? What is it about your company that makes it unique? Identifying some key buzz words (i.e. power, strength, compassion, healing) will help your designer focus in on symbols to convey that concept.

Survey your competitors — When trying to get an idea for a potential logo, it always helps to do a survey of competitor logos. Not only can you get a sense of the style for your industry/genre, but you can also make sure the logo you decide on doesn’t resemble an already existing logo. You should aim to be as unique as possible; the last thing you want is to get attached to a particular design, only to discover a competitor is using something similar…

Give yourself options — If possible, have a few different designs worked up for your review. Initially, our designer presented us with five rough sketches. From that five, we selected two to be fleshed out in various formats (stationary, business cards, web banner, etc.) It’s important to test out your logo in different sizes. What looks good on a web banner, might not necessarily look good on the spine of a book. Ideally, your logo should be easily adaptable to a variety of sizes/modifications.