One of the most famous logo designers in the world is Paul Rand — and he is one of our personal logo design heroes. He designed the logo for Enron as well as NeXT, the company Steve Jobs founded after he was fired from Apple. Paul Rand charged $33,000 for the former logo and $100,000 for the latter. Both of them became iconic for their time. Paul Rand’s genius paid off and made both companies household names.
If that’s not an endorsement for professional logo designers, nothing is.
A logo is an integral part of the identity of any brand or company. A company is recognized by its logo more than its slogan or its name today because a logo translates across languages and countries. Hence, a logo is a key part of the identity of any brand.
That’s why it’s so important for you to leave logo design to the professionals.
Why Should You Leave Logo Design to the Professionals?
Logo design is actually an often in-demand skill when it comes to freelancing portals. Not everyone can do it because it requires more than just a basic understanding of Photoshop (which by the way is NOT the program one should be creating a company logo in!). Instead, it takes a deep understanding of how the human brain functions and what it relates different images and colors to.
For example, in some cultures, certain images and colors can be related to danger or death. In other countries, those same things may be related to love or adventure. This understanding is extremely important when designing a logo.
It’s this intersection of skills that is needed to properly design an effective logo. That’s why it’s a good idea to hire a professional to design your logo for you. Here are few other reasons why you should consider investing in a professional logo designer instead of trying to DYI it yourself.
Leave a Lasting First Impression
A great logo can leave a great first impression. Most companies that have iconic logos have gotten that way because they’ve built a brand. However, some companies, though they’ve been around for a long time, haven’t built up iconic brands.
Having a recognizable logo is all about understanding how to make a first impression that lasts. Look at Twitter, Apple, or Windows. They have incredibly recognizable logos because people immediately connect with them. They’re not hard to decipher and aren’t complicated either.
However, finding something that conveys your brand identity, as well as communicates with the customer, is no easy task. That’s why professional logo designers are often commissioned for such work.
Get Quality Design as Well as Quality Images
Using a professional logo design service will mean that you’ll versions of your logo in all different types, sizes, colors and file formats. For instance, professional logo designers tend create and provide logos in multiple format such as .eps, .jpg, .png, etc. This is because different platforms may accept different file formats for uploads. A print shop or t-shirt shop is likely to want an .eps file, while a web design company may just need a .png.
A professional logo design service will give you your logo design in any format that you choose. Moreover, it will also give you the logo in the best possible quality. That way, uploading your logo online won’t reduce its quality despite those darn compression algorithms.
And, this is also why no reputable logo designer would be creating a logo in Photoshop! Photoshop is a raster-based program. When you create a raster-based logo and try to blow it up it will pixelate and not look crisp and clean. Logo designers will work in vector-based programs like Illustrator to create a logo that can be scaled to infinite sizes without a loss in quality.
Get a Logo with Staying Power
You may have noticed that companies sometimes change their logos slightly to appeal to new design aesthetics. At times it may have to do with fashion or with a new overall aesthetic. At times, it’s even part of a new campaign. However, they rarely change the “core” of the logo itself.
For example, some companies may slightly change their logos for holiday sales, seasons, and special events. However, they do this subtly, as they know that changing a logo too much may stop customers from recognizing it. That’s why getting a logo that is simple, yet connects with your core customer base is very important. It’s meant to adapt to changing circumstances.
Create a Logo For All Different Types of Media
A professionally designed logo can be used across all types of media to communicate a message. This includes not just print and digital media, but social media as well. The logo of a company is used across all social platforms like YouTube, Google, Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram, and even TikTok. Presence across all these forms of media is important for a brand to establish its identity.
A logo that doesn’t look clean and professional, as well as appealing on social media, won’t track well. Users start to identify brands with their logos over time, so it’s important that it appeals to them in a variety of venues.
That’s why companies spend so much time getting their logos just right in terms of dimensions and colors and sizes. It’s so they can look extremely appealing and fit into a certain mold for promotions and media.
The Importance of Professional Logo Design
Your Logo Creates Your Brand Identity
A company’s brand identity is closely tied to its logo. For example, Windows has a logo which is just a traditional window with two intersecting lines in between. The name and the logo connect. Apple has a logo of a bitten apple. These things are deceptively simple, but they make an impression which creates a brand identity.
Windows, ever the productivity and work focused operating system still looks extremely professional. Apple, the art focused and presentation oriented company, looks very artistic. This is a hard thing to achieve. You never know what people will associate with different images and colors.
That’s why logo design is so important. A logo can speak volumes to a customer before they even see the name of the company.
Your Logo Creates Awareness About Your Products and Services
While not always the case, a logo can create awareness about your products and services. That’s exactly what a logo should do. It should advertise what a company does and what it can do for its customers.
However, a logo can also send the wrong impression to your customers. For example Locum is a Swedish property management company. Its logo is the name of the company with a heart in place of the ‘o’. That seems simple enough.
Except, the letters are all lower case. Instead of Locum, it looks like the logo spells out ‘I love cum’. This is a horrendous mistake which shouldn’t have been made. However, all the customers that have yet seen the logo have already made certain associations they should never have.
Check out some of these other horrendous logo design mistakes.
This is why it’s important to invest in a good professional logo designer. They will take care not to create multiple meanings and problematic artwork for you.
Your Logo Sets You Apart from Competitors
A professional logo design is not just needed to create a first impression, but to set you apart from your competitors. This is not just for aesthetics and for brand discernment, but also for legal issues. There have been multiple accounts of different companies that have similar logos.
These companies at times aren’t even direct competitors, but end up having similar logos and thus creating problems. Many of them have gone to court over it and settled or defeated one another.
Your Logo Instills Trust Within Your Customers
Investing in a professional logo design will allow you to create something that instills trust within your customers. People associate quality, great service, and great products with their favorite brands. They know that if they spend money on their favorite brand, they won’t get cheated. In essence, they trust the brand.
That’s something that has to be earned. It won’t happen straight away with a brand logo, but it can help. A brand logo which is recognizable and different from the others stands out. That way, people are not only intrigued, they remember it after they make a purchase. It makes the brand easier to look up and to pick out in a crowd.
Once that happens, customers find it easier to associate trust with something simple and distinct.
Your Logo Unleashes New Ideas
You may even communicate things about your brand through your logo that your company name can’t. That’s the power of professional design. A professional designer may help you get the most out of your product by talking about it with you. They may help you find out what it is exactly that the company means to its customer. Logo design is not just about marking your brand. It’s about marking what your customers value in your brand.
Your Logo Communicates in a Better Way
A logo doesn’t just communicate that a brand has a product or a service. It also communicates the values of that brand. A certain color or a certain style to the logo can communicate a lot of different things to a customer.
Take for example, the Tesla logo. It’s just a single T, but it communicates so much more. It communicates that the company is working towards the future. It also communicates that the company is a status symbol. It also communicates that the company stands for quality and is the best at what it does.
Another car company Volkswagen, communicates similar thoughts through its logo. That’s what a professionally designed logo can do for you. It tells you even what the company name may not.
What Can You Avoid If You Leave Logo Design to the Professionals
Avoid Making the Wrong Impression
As mentioned above, it’s possible to make the wrong impression with a logo. The Locum logo for the Swedish real estate company clearly made the wrong impression. However, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are several bad logo designs out there which don’t give the right first impression. Instead, they give the wrong first impression which sticks.
Take for example, the Doughboys logo fail. Doughboys is “contemporary fast-casual restaurant, offering a fresh and healthy menu with items consisting of gourmet wood-fired pizzas, pastas and panini’s”.
However, the logo for Doughboys looks extremely phallic. To top it off, there are two droplets coming out of the tip of the logo. This is horrible logo design which can put several problematic references in the minds of your customers.
That’s why getting the logo right the first time is so important. Once it’s out there, if it creates the wrong impression, you can’t stop it. Too many people will have shared it online and ruined your brand’s legacy.
Avoid Conflict with Similar Brands
You are likely to have several different competitors that you will bump heads with during your brand’s entire lifetime. It’s better not to have a logo which even remotely resembles them. This is something that is all too easy a trap to fall in to. Getting a professional to design your logo is the first step to ensuring that you don’t unknowingly copy someone else.
Simple Design Mistakes
There are simple design mistakes you can make if you design your logo yourself. For example, you can take colors which don’t go together and design a logo off them. This will make your logo look very unappealing. The proper use of color in logo design can’t be stressed enough.
Also, you need someone else’s perspective to really give your logo the shape it needs. You may have an idea of what your logo means, but will the customer? It’s that outside perspective that a professional logo design service will give you. They will think of associations and data points that you don’t even know to look for.
All these reasons make the case of why you need to leave logo design to the professionals. It’s not just a question of monetary gain, but what your brand represents to its customers. With a logo, you’re letting them decide what your company stands for. Help them make the right decision by hiring a professional logo designer.
Also Read: 5 Elements of Effective Logo Design
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