Editor’s Note: Evans is a Senior Designer who works in both web and print, driving creative solutions to all clients through the Evans Akanno Creative Design Agency. His eye for precision was developed from his background in industrial chemistry and has grown into one of the agency’s unique proposition. Fuelled by good music, a relaxed atmosphere for work and an insatiable hunger for web technology, he develops innovative branding and clean websites to grow businesses.
No development is complete without design, web or mobile. Front-end design is a key feature for applications, especially for customers and clients. Most times, clients don’t care about how beautiful your codes look. Recently, I started learning principles and elements of graphic designing and found Evans’ walk-through on important factors that influence logo designs to be useful. If you are interested in designing like I am, this is a good read.
A lot of people misconstrue the art of logo design for just aesthetics. Logos are interpretations of central ideas that brands are built around and so should always have an angle. These angles are, in most cases, worked out by a hired creative director. It will include shapes, fonts, colours and sometimes slogans irrefutably connected to the ideals that the brand upholds. Logos of big brands like Nike and Adidas have achieved global acceptance and one can clearly see that they didn’t need to display pictures of sportsmen in tights to send a message.
In this post, we would go over a few important factors that are put into consideration before starting out on a logo design project.
Typeface
In the design of logos, typefaces aren’t considered as just ordinary. Some big brands have even adopted words or group of words written in a singular type face as logos. Forbes have their logo written in something in close resemblance to the Nicholas Bold font, and photo giants, Kodak have dabbled in serif fonts throughout the years. These brands understand that simplicity will penetrate the minds of its audience rather than ambiguity and cluster and so they would settle for things as very simple and identifiable typefaces. Overall, it is important that a brand/business is properly identified with a typeface that suits its field of business and most of all one that will be generally accepted by their customers. See a simple example – Townsend; can you guess the font?
Shapes and Imagery
To express an idea in logo designs, sometimes shapes and images are used. These shapes are carefully chosen to depict certain ideas that a brand is built on. Cart-like images depict shopping, spanner-like shapes depict engineering and so on. Sometimes, some shapes are designed with a story and become peculiar to a certain brand. It is important that while coming up with a logo for your brand, proper research is made with regards to shapes that might work in a particular field of business so that connecting with a target audience easy. I dug up a few logos that really explains imagery. Take a look at logo designs for Paraless and iFocus pictures.
Taglines
This is a very important aspect of logo designs. Taglines are developed as short sentences that give the target audience an overview of a brand. Other times, these lines are just catchy phrases that are created to live in the subconscious of a brand’s target audience. Lines like Nike’s ‘Just Do It’ or Nokia’s ‘Connecting People’ are perfect examples. As a brand, you will need to decide how best these lines will work for you and if they are even necessary for inclusion in a logo design.
Colour Theme
This is probably one of the most important things to take into notice when coming up with a logo design. Colours are one of the things a person easily relates to — it affects mood, taste and to an extent, the society. Big brands know this and so huge importance is attached to colours in the industry with regards to logo designs and a company’s general brand identity.
Before adopting a particular logo design, extensive research is required to understand colour trends in the field as well as understand colours that will easily appeal to the target audience. Some colours like blue might say ocean, masculine or tranquil while green might say vegetation, nature and so on. It is important not to stray from your idea by choosing an awkward colour like pink when you run a farm business. Also brand colour preference is instrumental in arriving at a general conclusion for a colour theme.
Are you a designer or interested in learning design? Did this help? Let’s know if you have other tips we can learn from.
