How to Create Effective Logo Designs with Examples

As graphic designers, we are often asked to design logos or redesign existing logos. What are the logo design principals, and what tools and techniques can we use?

Logo Design Research

Before pen hits paper, you must thoroughly research your client, their history, past brandings, and objectives, and understand their competition and target audience. Your client should be able to provide some information about their competitors to get you started.

Gather all the logos of the competition together and lay them out. Have a look through them. Are there any trends in this market sector? Do they share a similar style or typography? Are there branding conventions in this market sector? These questions can help your creative process by playing on familiar visual associations. It's also worth noting that some of the more successful logos stand out because they do not conform to the branding conventions of the sector, so being different and breaking the expected conventions can help as well.

Asking Questions about Logo Design

You need to ask your client six main questions to determine the overall message they want to portray in their branding.

1. Why are we here?
2. What do we do, and how do we do it?
3. What makes us different?
4. Who are we here for?
5. What do we value the most?
6. What's our personality?

Answers to these questions help create the tone of the design. For example, if your client portrays a friendly family, family-orientated image, then a strong, military-styled design is going to fail to work.

Stay Flexible with Logo Designs

You must be flexible in your designs. The client will often want to change certain design aspects, usually many times over. It's not uncommon to provide half a dozen proofs and have one selected with proposed changes, which results in another half dozen designs. Two concepts individually are great, but when they come together, they do not complement each other. There will be many back and forths and multiple changes and revisions, so stay flexible.

Respect the Brand Heritage

If you are working with a well-established client, they will pay to take inspiration from their previous branding. The current trend is for "back to the roots" branding. It allows the target audience to connect with the brand's past and realise that the client is well established, has been around for some time, and knows what they are doing. While a retro-branding exercise can reinvigorate a brand if they have a genuine heritage, be wary if they have had troubles in the past. The last thing you want to do is introduce a new logo, which many would associate with past failure.

Choose your Logo Typography Correctly

Typography can make or break a logo and branding. Typography is a very powerful tool for portraying a message, so care must be taken when choosing the right typeface. For example, serif fonts are considered more traditional, while sans-serif are modern. Cursive fonts are friendly, while block can be aggressive. Similarly, a brand may be associated with a particular typeface. In this case, you may need to change it or at least keep it very subtle.

You can read more about how typography portrays messages in my typography article.

Go Back to Logo Design Basics

Sometimes, the most straightforward approach is the best. Taking logo design back to the absolute basics can create some fantastic logos. Consider Apple and Nike—two straightforward logos, both immediately identifiable.

Don't Forget Negative Space when Designing Logos

Another approach to effective logo design is to use negative space to help portray a message or brand identification. Negative space is the space between graphic design elements successfully used by companies like FedEx and NBC. Negative space can also pack extra meaning when used cleverly and appropriately in a logo design.

Understand Logo Design Colours

The colour wheel is at the core of the colour theory, an essential tool for combining colours in different ways. The colour wheel was initially devised by Sir Isaac Newton in 1666, and the most common version features 12 colours based on the RYB colour model.

Different colours can be used to elicit a mood or feeling, either towards the brand or the company. Here are a few suggestions as to how colour affects mood.

• Red: energetic, sexy, bold
• Orange: creative, friendly, youthful
• Yellow: sunny, inventive, optimistic
• Green: growth, organic, instructional
• Blue: professional, medical, tranquil, trustworthy
• Purple: spiritual, wise, evocative
• Black: credible and powerful
• White: simple, clean, pure
• Pink: fun and flirty
• Brown: rural, historical, steady

You can read more about colour theory in this other article.

Consider the Media

In the digital age, graphic design is not only limited to printed media but digitally, both online and on TV. Any successful branding and logo must translate well to social media, websites, physical business cards, letterheads and traditional advertising. While embossing on a business card or metallic effects on fliers and brochures look great and stand out, they do not translate to digital mediums.

Likewise, the choice of colours should take into account limitations of the printing process, which are often in CMYK, especially if promotional material such as embroidery and screen printing is on the cards. These are typically limited to a certain number of colours and stitch counts, maybe even four colours, so if designing a logo with lots of colours, you may include a monochrome or reduced palette alternative for these.

Help your Client Roll Out Their New Logo

Once your branding is complete, a thorough brand usage guideline document should be produced. This should cover everything from colour options to minimum and maximum sizes at which logo designs should be used, positioning rules, and spacing. This will allow the client to get the most out of the new logo and ensure a consistent handover to a client's in-house team.

Seven Creative Logos with Hidden Meanings You Haven't Noticed

Here is a collection of creative logos that have a secret hidden meaning. Once you have seen the secret, you can't help but notice it.

The FexEx logo has a right-facing arrow symbolising progress, movement, advancing, etc., between the E and the X at the end.

Amazon offers everything from A to Z. Can you spot the connection in their logo? Also, the downward curve on the arrow can represent a smile, making the logo look more friendly.

The London Symphony Orchestra logo displays the letters LSO in a handwritten typeface, but does it also look like an orchestra conductor? He is holding his baton in his left hand and his right hand towards his head.

The Sony Vaio logo cleverly incorporates the transition from analogue to digital, with the Va being formed from a sine wave and the io being a digital binary.

The Sun Microsystems logo is clever in that it spells the word Sun in a neverending circle, and it can be seen from every angle.

The Planetary Society logo cleverly disguises Saturn in its logo in the first letter of Planetary.

The LG logo may at first look like a face made from the letters L and G, but if you rotate it and move the L, you get Pac-Man as well!

Online Resources for Logo Design

Check out these excellent online resources for graphic design inspiration or critique on new designs and logos.

• Niice - The Ultimate Canvas for Creative Discussion
• Logopond - Logo, Brand & Identity Inspiration
• The Design Inspiration - Daily Logo Designs, Illustration Art
• Identityview - Logo Design Inspiration Gallery
• Find and work with talented freelance designers online.