Logo Design Tips From the Experts

Any designer deserving their salt can create a fit-for-purpose logo, but studying all aspects of the craft takes time.

Of course, logo design is just one little subset of branding with Octalogo – which these days can consolidate a dizzying number of activation points, from internal design right through to tone of voice on social communications – but the logo, or label mark, remains the centerpiece of most branding schemes.
As editor of System Arts and chair of professionals for the Brand Impact Honors, I have spoken to extra than my fair share of branding professionals about the complexities of proper logo creation, and what passes as a great logo. So here are 25 pro logo design tips to help you develop your branding work – from the research phase, through different stages of logo design and finally the application of the mark.
Before pen hits document on any new logo design project, thorough research is necessary. Here are five logo design tips for nailing this crucial first stage of the process.

Understand your competition

Apple cut through the conventional computing sector like a hot knife through butter in the 80s and has since proceeded into one of the world’s most valuable brands
Before you even start working up a logo design concept, ensure you research your target market completely. Your client should be able to contribute some information about their contenders to get you started.
Compare all the logos in their contentious set. This research may well reveal some entrenched branding conventions in that market sector, and that can sometimes help your process by playing on natural visual associations.
But bear in mind that many of the world’s most recognizable logo designs stand out individually because they eschew trends and think differently.

Stay flexible during the process

In Five and a Half Levels is recommended revealing to help you get to handles with all the key steps of the branding process and the gray areas between them
Once you’ve formulated an approach, you don’t have to set it in grain. There’s a reason that Johnson banks’ artistic process has that extra half step: number 2.5 describes the gray area between approach and design.

According to Johnson, it can be a two-way highway. Some conceptual, necessary ideas that work in theory may fall apart in practice when visualized; conversely, a compelling visual answer that emerges from left-field during the design stage can feed back into stage two and help grow the strategy retrospectively.

Remember: a logo is just one ingredient

As Bonner puts it, the pyramid has exchanged: people now engage with a brand in a huge variety of various touchpoints, and the logo is not regularly their first period of contact with a brand.
Keep this in mind as you promote your logo design: stay versatile and flexible, and examine how the logo communicates with the rest of the brand experience, from packaging to tone of voice.

Tweak and refine to add personality

If you use an existing typeface in a logotype, particularly a near-ubiquitous one such as Helvetica, there is often more pressure on other touchpoints, such as imagery, color palette, a tone of voice and so on, to develop and enhance the brand’s personality.

Skillful tracking and kerning are essential when setting a simple logotype in an existing typeface. Wide-tracked type can feel sophisticated and authoritative, while tight, meticulous kerning can help lock individual letterforms together as the self-contained unit.
Once in logotype form, tweaking and modifying the typeface can also smooth links between letterforms, or add a unique twist to fit the tone of the brand - one example would be shearing off letter terminals at matching angles