How to Design a Logo | Ultimate Guide

This is the ultimate logo design guide to learning and knowing about the importance of logo design for both logo designers and business owners

Importance of Logo Design

Firstly, It is an image of your company and it shows your identity. Many designers and entrepreneur thinks that it should be very nice and minimal and many things but it is a myth about the logo. Anything that can represent an icon of your brand can be treated as a logo but this doesn’t mean you ignore the design and thinking part. Good logos reduce marketing costs and spacing issues, Increase recall Value, etc. in the long run.

Logo Design Process

Straight forward this is the most important part of creating a timeless and attention-grabbing logo design and also the most complicated part as there is no single logo process everyone thinks and executes the strategy differently.

But here are some components that should be present at the time of implementing the strategy.

Planning

This is the most important as well as the most ignored part of designing a logo especially when they totally ignore these points.

Target Audience

The first thing that is required in the planning phase is defining the target audience of that company. These are some points to be considered for defining the target audience.

• Gender and age
• Geography
• Industry
• Income of consumer
• Size of market
• Audience Preferences

These are some points to be considered that help in making a logo useful. For example, a toy company reaches you and says need a logo without any info regarding the product and its market.

If you make a very beautiful minimal logo for a kid’s product line still it will be useless. Let me tell you why. Let’s say you later came to know it is an eco-friendly toy without plastic and the target is health-conscious parents. Does that make sense?

Logo Placement

You should ask where the logo will be used. It can be used for building, apps, or even bottle inner caps so that you can make the logo as per your needs. For example, You cannot make a complicated mascot logo for a website favicon and that’s the reason many companies are going online and looking for a minimal icon style logo.

That is why I also prefer an icon logo as I have a logo that can be used as an icon, watermark, favicon, print, and almost everywhere online but it is not always the case my logo can’t be used as a hotel logo it will need a wordmark logo so people can see it from distance.

Nowadays many companies Demand different versions of the same logo.

Famous food brand Burger King might redesign its logo because of this reason its new flat logo can more effectively be used online now.

Choosing Logo Types

After doing and evaluating two points now you can choose a logotype. There are many different types of logos like :

• Wordmark
• Letter mark
• Mascot
• Pictorial logo
• Emblem logo
• 3D logo
• Combination logo
• Check full list

I am not going deep into it there are many types of logos and you can also make a combination of them as per your requirement there are no fixed rules.

Brainstorming and Sketches

As I mentioned every designer has different methods of logo design but this is done by every designer in a low to extreme way some just take inspiration and start designing, Some may create a mood board paste design inspiration sketch, design perfectly and draw different versions.

But I am not good at hand drawing just make basic sketches and find some inspiration from big brands, Pinterest, Behance, etc.

It helps in determining a clear path for the final version logo from the start also you can start with clients’ chosen sketches to avoid revisions in the vector version.

Logo Design & Logo Development Process

I have seen most designers do it perfectly and understand it properly but there are some important aspects missed at the time of designing the logo. So let me tell you some design mistakes you do at this time:

Greyscale

Try to make your logo at the grayscale first then proceed to the colour logo it will make your logo stand out and help you in determining various colours later on.

Use of tools

Almost any software have these tools and you must have knowledge of using them wisely, especially rulers, pen tool, shape builder tools, grids, and much more. I am not going deep into it as I don’t think the blog is a way to explain them you should take a small course if you want to learn and master it or see some free YouTube videos.

Colour Choice

You can use common sense at the time of choosing colors mostly 3 colors max are preferred but there are no rules you can go as much as you want unless the logo seems OK.

Also determining colour choice depends on the planning stage you have to choose a logo colour based on planning and the points that I discussed.

For Example, a luxury logo must be gold, rose gold, neon, black and white something like this whereas an economical logo can be of any colour that relates to business.

Make sure your colours have proper contrast and balance.

As I mentioned earlier there are no rules you can use gradients too. I have seen some expert says no to using gradient in the logo but the Canva logo is a clear successful example of it.

Typography

When it comes to typography it is as same as the color you have to choose it based on the planning part simply means a technology website will need monospace or sans serif fonts whereas a beauty website may require serif or custom handwritten calligraphy fonts.

There are many good fonts available to choose from on many platforms like Google fonts, adobe fonts, DA fonts, 1001fonts, and Behance and the list goes on and on. Make sure you have a license to use it. Some big companies also use their own fonts.

There are some points to take care of, Today web-safe fonts are preferred

Also, proper line height and kerning must be done.

Variation

Many designers make totally different logos and show them to their clients which is useless more choices kill importance instead focus energy on creating one unique logo. You should present variations but not completely new logos just variations on colours, different backgrounds, dark light logo versions, different positions, etc. are needed.

Mockups and final presentation

Showing your client a proper mockup is important from proper I mean relevant mockups. Recently I designed a boat company logo and used mockups of the ship, storage, captain, and crew T-shirts, etc.

You can also show your process screenshots, grids, sketches, etc., and these all things make a premium feel to your client. Eventually, can charge high for it and the buyer will be also happy to give you money.

Logo design trends

I have seen many trends coming and going I would say instead of trends you should focus on what the client wants and deliver them arguing is worthless if clients need something specific, Deliver them no need to apply any logic.

In this logo design guide, I am focusing on knowledge about logos as it is not a course or magazine so I think if you want to know about current trends just follow a magazine blog or a YouTuber that speaks about logos.

Logo Designing as a Career

Logo design is an evergreen field and will remain forever but due to competition, AI and low rates if you want to be successful you have to stand out from the crowd let me tell you some methods to be successful as per my experience (Of course, at last, it depends about passions and hard work but you can learn something from it)

Create a Niche

You cannot target everyone the earlier you understand, the better. I have seen people designing just its specific field doing very well. I myself work only with a few clients

There are many benefits of niche down.

Some of them are you can target and find new clients easily, Clients can see results, and your marketing cost is reduced and can charged very high.

Let me tell you I have seen a logo designer just targeting cat owners and making logos of cats and making huge money she has a huge cat owner following, email list also upsells by doing print-on-demand making of logos on t-shirts, frames, and much more.

See only targets cat owners, cat doctors, and pretty much every person associated with cats.

Must have a good-looking website

Having a website gives many benefits especially if your website is well-designed and has a good funnel for customer acquisition. I recommend a webflow website for a portfolio. You can also use Wix Editor X, WordPress, and Squarespace if you want to blog too.

You can also do print on demand, make courses, and do other things on-site side by side will be discussed later in the blog.

Promote your personal brand or your agency brand

By promoting I mean to do as much marketing as possible in your budget or organically. You can run targeted ads, SEO, Social media marketing, Create funnels, and pretty much everything to expose yourself to the public and collect their data. Take an omnichannel approach to find your clients on all platforms.

Don’t stick to freelancing platforms

For starting it is okay to start with a freelancing platform gain some experience and from that money and knowledge create your own brand as it opens many options to be self-sufficient.

Passive income with logo design

There are multiple ways you can build passive income. If you have built an audience or brand and become a logo expert in your niche as discussed above. Let me list them to blow your mind so you can individually see which can work for you.

• Brand deals (Some companies will reach out for promotion to your audience automatically)
• Affiliate earning
• Print-on-demand upsell (you can use merch, red bubble, or tee springs for delivery)
• Upselling other services like logo animation, and seasonal logo design will be discussed later.
• Create Courses and ebooks.
• Write blogs and earn
• Create a YouTube video and earn
• Outsource projects and make referrals.
• Do vlogs (You can travel and make vlogs while doing logo work side by side)

See all this is only possible if you become an expert or make a huge audience, the majority of logo designers ignore this and fail to grow in this field. My aim is to spread awareness to all freelancers through this logo design guide.

Still, if you are a good influencer or expert make sure you give 100% value no fake promotion. Try to increase as much quality as possible.

Upsell with Logo Design Techniques

As I mentioned above there are some skills you can learn and charge more and make a returning income

Brand Identity and Guidelines

Creating a brand identity and guidelines makes it easy to charge more for a single project it may take time to understand and learn to create a brand identity but you will be able to learn very quickly.

Logo Animation

Learning animation for logos in After Effects gives an upper hand and many companies want logo animation too.

Seasonal Logo

I have had this trend recently to personalize holidays or special moments they upgrade their logo accordingly you can earn recurring income by doing simple edits to their logo for festivals and holidays.

Software for logo design

Any vector Software can work I prefer illustration for all. Please don’t create logos in raster software and ready-made vector software like canva they violate copyrights.

Logo Design Impact due to AI(Artificial Intelligence)

Definitely, AI is a threat to almost 90% of the low-skill logo designers but a high-skill logo designer with the power of AI will do much better in the long run. I highly recommend doing complete rebranding, and motion design and providing high-quality services to stand out and don’t get vanished by the AI

You will surely need to stand out or else everything you learn will be a waste of time as AI has already eaten almost half of Creative jobs in recent days and will continue to involve and you need to learn AI tools to make use of it and deliver results taking inspiration.

Here is a small FAQ for some common questions for both buyers as well as designers: