How to Create a Logo: It Is the Most Important Part of Branding

The logo is the symbol that will represent your brand and one of the most important parts of branding. It will be the image of your company. All the elements surrounding your product or service and marketing channel will be present.

Typically, your logo is one of the things that customers remember most when they think of your brand. And if you make it memorable, it may even be the first thing that comes to mind when they think of a particular niche.

Plus, it’s usually the first thing customers see. And you know what they say: first impressions are essential.

For all these reasons, the process of how to design a logo should not be taken lightly.

If you have sufficient resources, it is best to hire a graphic designer. But if you can’t afford one or want to create your logo, this article will help you.

Here, you will find the six steps to create a logo that you should follow to get the best results and some extra recommendations. In addition, we leave you with some of the best design tools you can use.

1. Define your story

Let’s get started with the first step to create a logo. First of all, a logo must express what your brand is and convey its essence and style. Therefore, we recommend that the first thing you do is a document in which you define:

• Who are you?
• What do you offer?
• Why your brand emerged.
• And what sets you apart from the competition.

By clarifying these aspects, you will have a base and a kind of guide to work from. This will also help you create a design with soul and personality fully adapted to your brand.

2. Study your target audience

In addition to your essence, a logo must adapt to the tastes and style of the audience you want to reach. Creating a logo for a young audience is not the same as creating a logo for more mature people. Therefore, the next step will be to analyze and understand your audience. To do this, you can guide yourself by answering the following questions:

• How old is your target audience?
• Do you want to reach a more male or female audience?
• What style do they usually have when communicating?

Once you have completed these first two steps to create a logo, we recommend you start making your first sketches based on the answers.

3. Analyze the competition

Analyzing the competition in designing a logo serves two purposes: to inspire you and to ensure that the sketches created until now do not exist.

This step will consist of doing a little research and analysis on the branding of your most direct competitors, that is, brands that sell your same products or services to the same target audience.

You will have to compile their logos and then change the sketches you have already created or get inspired to create new ones.

At this stage you may notice that some of the logos you created look very similar to existing ones from your competitors. Don’t worry; this is normal and part of the process. But if this is the case, you must make changes and consider new ones.

In the last part of this step, you should already have some fairly advanced and defined sketches to move on to the next phase.

4. Decide what type of logo you want

Logos can be divided into three main categories: logos with images, logos with letters, and hybrid logos.

At this point, you must choose which path you want to take. You may have chosen without knowing it through the sketches you created.

Or maybe you had only considered one option, and now, knowing this, you want to create a sketch for another type of logo. Now is the time!

5. Define your colours and experiment with typography

Now is the time to give life and personality to those sketches that have reached this stage.

If your logo has letters, you will need to choose the font. It would help if you also chose other aspects, such as colour, spacing, and composition.

Remember that the final result must be consistent with everything you have established in steps one, two, and three. Also, a logo must be memorable and adaptable to different formats and sizes.

Something significant in this logo creation phase is considering what is known as colour psychology. This field of study analyzes the effect of colours on people’s behaviour, feelings, and thoughts.

Colour psychology states that each colour is associated with a particular emotion. At this stage, we encourage you to learn more about this to choose the tone that best relates to your message.

6. Test the different versions and choose the final one

This step is only necessary if you have different logo versions and don’t know which one to choose. If you have no doubts and you already have the final one, this last phase will not be necessary.

To choose the most suitable logo, you can survey the team members or use focus groups. Focus groups are group discussions in which members give their opinions.