Things to consider before designing company logos:

There are certain points that every small business owners must keep in mind before starting the branding process and logo designing.

• What’s the organization’s purpose of existence – what are going to offer to the market?
• Who are your target customers – what is your audience’s demography?
• What is your Universal Selling Proposition (USP) – what makes you different from competitors?
• How should the logo look and feel when being presented in front of customers, employees.

What creates purposeful company logos?

A company logo isn’t just a name, symbol or mark of the organization. It represents the true representation of a brand identity. A brand is backed by a strong logo that accurately depicts what the company’s mission is. But creating logos is not everyone’s ballgame. There are risks of using elements imperfectly in corporate logos. The best of logo designers have succeeded in establishing famous brands by incorporating a purposeful corporate logo in the branding process.
In order to avoid logo designing mistakes, following points are useful in making a purposeful and effective logo:

• Meaningful; Your business logo must convey the company’s message to its target market.
• Recognizable; Your clients should be able to identify your logo anywhere and anytime.
• Simple; The design in your company logo should be straightforward and easily comprehendible.
• Memorable; It should be made unforgettable and long-lasting for at least the next decade.
• Appealing; your business logo should be designed to target your desired audience.

A corporate logo is, by far, the single most important aspect of a corporate identity. It provides you the means to promote your business in the marketplace in an efficient and effective manner. Think of corporate logos as a visual clip of your business. It directly communicates the purpose of your business to your customers and leaves an everlasting impression in their minds. Hence it is extremely vital for corporate entities and small business owners to invest sensibly in their corporate logos.

Elements of a corporate logo:
A corporate logo is a combination of several elements. It is an amalgamation of various graphic design components. Following enlisted are the most common elements of corporate logos:

• Color
• Symbol
• Font
• Size
• Tagline

But a branding disaster happens when these elements are incorrectly used in a corporate logo. To strike a perfect balance between the elements is the most difficult task for a logo designer. He must be aware of the do’s and don’ts of company logos

Incorrect use of elements in a corporate logo:
As mentioned earlier, if a correct equilibrium is not achieved between the elements of a logo, it may end up as a total failure. Let us analyze how each element, if wrongly used, can impediment the purpose of a corporate logo.

1. Inappropriate Colors:

Color plays a major role in the logo making process. Every color has its unique connotation and contextual meaning. Inappropriate use of colors can severely dent the show of your corporate logo.

2. Irrelevant Symbols:

Symbol forms the core portion of corporate logos and carries the image of the business. One of the logo designing mistakes that logo designers make is use symbols in a logo that are irrelevant to the nature of the business. This ruins the corporate image of the company.

3. Unsuitable Fonts:

Although actions speak louder than words, but in the case of corporate logos, it is the entire opposite. The words used and the typography in which they are used is extremely essential. Be it typography logos, using unsuitable and unreadable fonts can create a negative image of your company. For example, using casual and informal fonts in a luxury type business can seriously dent the class of the corporation.

4. Improper Size:

A logo too small becomes unnoticeable, too large becomes uncanny. In short, if the correct size is not made, then the identity is useless to use. The size should be determined keeping in view all places where the logo is to be used. Sometimes, a large size logo becomes unclear when resized.

5. Lengthy Taglines:

A tagline or a slogan comes as an added feature of the logo. It serves as the message platform where you define your business in a few simple but effective words. But if a tagline is too lengthy, it can damage the corporate logo as a whole. Additionally, when the logo is resized, the tagline becomes unreadable.

Corporate logos are an integral component of the branding process. A logo design itself is bifurcated into several components. One of the most important elements of a corporate logo is the typography used in it. The correct use of typeface is extremely vital in devising an appropriate brand identity. The style of font used, be it formal, casual, retro or stylish depends upon the nature of the industry for which the business logos are created.

For instance, a luxury five-star hotel or a large multinational corporation has to adopt a formal typography in its corporate logo so as to give it a formal and elegant appearance. While small businesses like fast food restaurants and coffee shops can afford to use causal and stylish fonts in consonance with the nature of their business.

Following is a collection of 26 meaningful typography logos that beautifully express the meaning through words.

Failure is every small businessman’s nightmare and an investor’s worst fear. Yes, the apprehension of failure looms in the minds of every small business owner from start. But everything happens for a reason, doesn’t it? Then why do 9 out of 10 small businesses ultimately fail?

Some small business owners are lucky enough to last for a few years, while a majority of them don’t even stay long enough to celebrate a single anniversary. One can never attribute the reason of small business failure to a solitary reason. In a normal business life cycle, there are four phases. The introductory, growth, maturity and decline phase. Failure at each level is owing to different reasons. In order to analyze the precise reasons for failure, let us make an inspection on each phase of the small business life cycle.

• Failure at introductory stage:

A majority of businesses collapse at the initial stage. This is the stage where the business is raw. The main reasons that small businesses fail in this early phase is lack of planning. Businesses set-up in haste are always prone to fail. Without any future planning and long-term strategy, any business is likely to fail. Another reason for collapse in the early stages is the lack of financial support to sustain the business over the years. This is also linked to reckless planning on the part of small business owners.

• Failure at growth stage:

In the growth stage, a small business commences its take off from the runway of infancy to the skies of development. Problems during this phase are partly attributed to the lack of vision and forecasting. Although many small businessmen claim extraneous factors to be the real cause of failure, but this is far from the truth. No doubt, unexpected business and environmental factors play a role in failure of business. But this crisis can be averted with a pre-planned approach taking all the intrinsic and extrinsic factors into account.
“There are no failures – just experiences and your reactions to them.”
 Tom Krause

• Failure at maturity stage:

At the maturity stage, a small business moves towards the phase of stability. At this point the business growth is in stagnation. Since the business has reached its threshold, it cannot move any further until innovative measures are taken. This is the reason why small businesses at the maturity stage fail. This is the point when small business owners require inducing innovative and creativity to lift their business endeavors.

• Failure at decline stage:

This is the final stage that a failing small business goes through. Failure in this phase is genuinely due to lack of commitment and interest on the part of the owner(s). Business at the decline stage is like a sinking ship. There is little that a small business owner can do. But then again…where there is a will there is a way. Small business owners should work out a bailout plan for their business in advance to prevent this situation.

However, I would advice all the small business owners not to give up easily and try to overcome all these problems mentioned above. After all, it’s better to try and fail than fail to try.

The term “company logo” has no identity of its own, but if it is used in a particular country, it adopts the colors of the nation. Evidently, company logos vary from one country to another because designers’ creative styles are divergent in every nation. Although, creative minds think alike but not all logo designers think in the same manner. Each logo designer possesses a unique style of his own. That is why the logo designs within the same industry are diverse across nations.

To analyze this premise, I have compared the company logos of two distinct countries…US and French company logos. Below are 20 counterpart logos of the two nations from 10 different industries.

Airline Logos

Automobile Logos

Bank Logos

Footwear Logos

Beer Logos

Cosmetic Logos

Confectionary Logos

Insurance Logos

Software Developer Logos

Real Estate Logos

Points to consider for a logo redesign:

Business without a corporate logo is like an entity with no unique identity. Logos deserve particular attention and before a logo is redesigned, one should know why the redesign is needed. Following things should be considered before redesigning corporate logos:

• Analyze what the existing company logos lack.
• Remove unnecessary features from the previous logo design.
• Try to single out a striking feature of the logo to work on.
• Fill in the gaps left by the previous logo design with creative thoughts.

Over the years, we have witnessed many famous brands who have tried to refresh their corporate identity with a logo redesign. Today, I have selected 22 of the most famous logo redesigns of 2009 that came under immense limelight.

Segd

Movistar

City of Melbourne

Master Card

Audi

Good Humor Ice Cream

Toys Rus

Play Station 3

Skittles

UEFA EURO

Peugot

Missile Defense Agency

British Petroleum

Quicktime

Argos

Blackwater

Msn

Kraft Foods

Telecom

AOL:

FireFox

Logo design is the primary building block of any business. It epitomizes the essence of your small business in a very effective way. Although everyone wants the best possible start for your small business or start-up business, but sadly do not have the resources to make their dreams come true. This is where the use of online logo design comes into play. With the advent of the internet boom, things have become effortless for all fields of life. So is the case with design industry. Online corporate logos can aid you in saving both time and money, especially when you are starting up a small business. All you need to do is go on the Internet and you will be able to find a wide array of affordable online logos in no time.

I can tell you this because I run my own business and utilized online logo designs for my business logos. Through a click, I was able to get in touch promptly and effortlessly with many sources that were able to help me. While the entities varied greatly in their logo design abilities and fees, I was not eager to pay as much as they were charging. Hence I diverted my search to free online logo designs. I actually came across a great deal of services.

Merits of Online Logo Designs:

• Online logo designs saves valuable amount of time to create.
• Saving money is the best part of using this facility.
• Designing your logo online gives your small business a quick start that it needs.
• They are all modifiable so that you may customize them according to your needs.
• Saves you trouble of using expensive and complex graphics designing software.

Demerits of Online Logo Designs:

• Choices are limited when it comes to selecting online logo designs.
• You cannot create a really detailed, professional looking logo, as the online process is built to be very basic.
• There are more chances of finding counterfeit logos online.
• Relying on online logo design may curtail your creativity.

Of course, one should not compare a basic online logo design with the work of a professional logo designer. Both have their own significance. But then again desperate times call for desperate measures. Many small business owners simply do not have room in their budget to get an expensive professional logo made. When you just cannot afford the price, you can always fancy using online logo designs.

What is your opinion on the use of online logo design? Is it helpful for the small business owners who cannot afford expensive logo design? Or does it unethically hurt professional logo designers?