Your logo gives your customers their first impression of your company. If you want that first impression to be that you’re professional and reliable, you need a stellar logo design. If your logo doesn’t meet the mark — well, we’ll let you imagine the impression that can leave on them.
Are you considering designing your own logo? Cool, are you a professional graphic designer?
If not, we highly recommend leaving this to the pros. If you try to DIY it as an amateur, you’ll more likely than not give your leads the impression that you’re an amateur company, as well.
So, why is it so important to have the best logo possible? We’ll dig into the importance of sleek designs and then walk you through common mistakes made by those who DIY their logos.
The Importance of Logo Design
Your logo impacts your brand identity in more ways than we can count. Here are the biggest three:
Your Logo Grabs Attention
Consumers judge brands based on their appearances. If your logo isn’t designed well, do you think consumers will want to do business with you?
A professional logo gives your brand a symbol that grabs people’s attention and allows them to get a glimpse of what you offer. If your logo can pique their curiosity, they’ll be far more likely to check out your brand, hopefully leading to more sales for you.
Your Logo Is the Foundation of Your Brand Identity
Your logo represents your brand's identity and personality and sets the tone for everything that follows. It’s also the most basic way to make your content recognizable to potential customers.
Some may not remember the exact name of your company, including previous customers. However, if you have a recognizable logo, it will be easier for people to remember your brand and identify your company so they can keep bringing you business.
Your Logo Distinguishes You From Competitors
You’re not the only player in your niche. By showing what makes your brand unique from the competition, your logo can help your brand stand out.
In short, clean, balanced, memorable, unique, and symbolic logo design can do wonders for establishing your brand. So let’s look at the flip side of this — what happens with a bad logo design? We’ll look at some of the most common logo design mistakes made by those who chose to DIY instead of calling in the experts.
Common Logo Design Mistakes to Avoid
If you want to check the work of professionals to make sure they’re worth the price, you need to know what common logo design mistakes to look for:
The Design is Too Simple or Too Complex
You may have many ideas that you want to be incorporated into your logo — but please, design with moderation. Overcomplicating the design is a common mistake committed by novices during the logo design process. Logos with complex designs just won’t deliver the brand recognition you’re aiming for; if you have too much going on, your leads won’t be able to remember the design or your brand.
On the other side of things, you should also avoid oversimplifying your design. An overly simple design won’t be enough to convey the message you want to deliver. If your target audience can’t tell what you do, it will probably just confuse them, which defeats the purpose of having a logo to begin with.
You shouldn’t be afraid of any details and design elements that your logo designer includes; it’s only a problem if they go overboard with it. When you strike the right balance and avoid both overcomplicating and oversimplifying the design, you’ll have a logo that sticks in the minds of people who see it and gives them a sense of what your brand can do for them.
The Logo is a Copycat
Logos are the intellectual properties of the companies that own them. When creating your own logo, it cannot have significant similarities to any existing logo designs, especially from companies from the same niche.
While it's impossible to check every logo in existence for similarities, you can at least make sure that your logo design is not in any way similar to what your closest competitors are using. If they’re too close — regardless of whether the similarities are intentional or not — you may face legal issues, particularly when the original logo is from a well-known brand.
The Font and Color Choices are Poor
Font and color choices can make or break your logo. Just like your brand, fonts have their own personalities, so choose the one that best represents your brand. It can take a lot of digging to find one that fits, but it’s worth it considering how impactful the decision will be.
The color choices should also be spot-on. The right hues in the right combinations can capture viewers’ attention, contribute to the overall personality of your branding, and communicate what potential customers can expect from you.
The Only Foolproof Way to Get a Professional Logo
With the complexity involved in the creation of a logo for your brand, you must make sure that you take measures to avoid committing any mistakes. One common mistake of a lot of entrepreneurs is designing their brand’s logo on their own.
While it is possible for you to come up with a good logo yourself, it won’t be the best one. Of course, you would want the best logo for your brand, right?
The thing is, while you may have an idea of what your logo design should look like, you don’t have the skills to properly execute it. As a result, you come up with a logo that doesn’t just convey what your brand stands for, but also can’t grab the attention of potential customers. This makes DIY logo design creation not an advisable idea.
To ensure that you can come up with a professional logo design, the best thing you can do is to rely on the services of a professional logo design company. You can simply relay to them what you want your logo to convey and their team will come up with a logo design that looks professional and can create a personality for your brand.
Bottom Line
A professional logo design is essential for any brand, whether it’s a startup or a multinational company. Doing your logo by yourself isn’t going to get you the results you need — if you want a logo that captures and converts, you need to hire a professional to design your logo. They’re the only ones with the expertise necessary to create a unique, creative, and easy-to-remember logo that accurately represents your brand.