Designing a Versatile Brand Logo for Your Business

The signature of your brand, your logo, is going to serve you in a variety of capacities. In addition to appearing on your products and packaging, it will be found on your website(s), social media, newsletters, stationery, business cards, and advertisements.

It might also appear on hats, shirts, coffee cups and hundreds of other places if you are rolling with the big boys. If designing a versatile brand logo is your goal, take these five tips into consideration.

Simplicity Is Strength

Keep it simple. Too many people make logos more complicated than they need to be. As you begin work with your brand logo generator, keep in mind you’re creating a symbol that should be recognizable even when it appears without your brand name.

Keeping it simple makes this easier to accomplish. Further, legibility always suffers when too many details are added. An overabundance of colors and lines will get lost when you try to reproduce it in smaller sizes.

As a blogger, I had someone on Etsy design a brand logo for me. Even though my style will be changing in the new year, I should still be able to use my same logo. I think.

Use Negative Space Carefully

You have to be careful to size the individual elements so that people see what you want them to see. This is especially true if you’re using the negative space to create a secondary element the way FedEx does with the area between the “E” and the “X” in its logo.

You also have to take printing tolerances into consideration. If the spatial relationship between the elements is misjudged, you’ll run into overlapping problems.

Color Matters

In general, you should default to separate solid colors. Gradients can be problematic; lighter ones can disappear altogether, while darker ones can get muddy looking.

Before you commit to a design incorporating these elements, test it in a variety of circumstances. This way you can see if it plays well regardless of how and where it is employed.

But Then Again, It Shouldn’t

The best logos will read whether they’re rendered in full color or black and white. The Apple logo was introduced as a rainbow-shaped apple with a bite out of it. (By the way, those colors are still in use by the company for the icons of native iOS apps.)

Today’s Apple logo is always rendered in a monotone, which is a testament to the strength and versatility of the basic brand logo design. The symbol upon which you settle should look good and be just as recognizable whether presented in full color or black and white.

Avoid Common Brand Logo Pitfalls

Make your brand logo too literal and you’ll run the risk of it being lost in a sea of sameness. How many dentists have you seen use some form of a tooth in their logos? While a contemporary look can be desirable, be careful to avoid succumbing to trendiness.

You want your logo to be capable of enduring the test of time. Coca Cola’s logo has stood up for over 130 years because it relied upon a classic design rather than bowing to the trends when it was created. Imagine how antiquated it would look today had it followed the trends that were in vogue in 1886.

So, there you have it.

Designing a versatile brand logo is simply a matter of keeping it simple, using negative space wisely, being careful with color and going with a distinctive shape. Do this, while avoiding the common pitfalls outlined above, and you’ll have a mark that will stand the test of time. It will also look good wherever you use it!