Hey guys what’s going on today I’m going to be sharing with you 7 Logo Design Tips that will actually blow your mind. These things will help you so much.
The first tip is that the logo is the face it’s not exactly what the company is. A lot of the time logo designers like to think that they have to have what the company sells or the main thing about the company on the logo. For instance, a dog walker should have a dog in the logo right. Well, let’s take a look at some of the most successful brands that we know.
So let’s look at apple, what does apple sell they sell technology they sell phones they sell computers. In their apple logo, I don’t see any tech okay well let’s look at sony they sell everything from cameras to TVs.
We don’t see any TVs or anything in their logo when you’re designing a logo do not be afraid to go abstract and go outside of the box obviously apple’s look is very literal. But let’s say we’re working for a tech company does it have to have that product. In the logo or an abstract version no it doesn’t it just has to be unique and identifiable.
Number two keep it flexible a logo is designed so it’s functionally able to appear anywhere that people can see and remember. Hence why I talk a lot about functionality here on the channel. If you can tear a logo into ten little pieces and you can scale it up very big and scale it down very small add a blur to it so when you take your glasses off and you squint you can hardly see it.
Can you recognize it well if you can still recognize the logo after it’s been distorted then that generally means that it’s a good design and that’s what it was designed. let’s take a look at target’s logo to take that chop it in half you still know it is target’s logo. Let’s take a look at Sony’s logo chop it in half there you go Sony’s logo you still can see it.
All of these different logos have been made so that they are timeless they don’t have to be changed again and that is the way that it is working it’s functional works on the computer works when it’s small works when it’s big it can be printed it can be anywhere and it still works.
Tip number three is to sketch 20 ideas. So you’re designing a logo and you’re struggling to create ideas well. here’s one little thing you can do so sit down with your sketchbook and your pencil set a timer for 10 minutes on your mobile and then go ahead and start to draw 10 logos.
These sketches should be ideas but you should not spend more than one minute on each logo. What this does is it forces you to create simple shapes and simple ideas. Which are the bare bones and the foundations of all good logo designs. I do this all the time not so structured I’ll just literally have a sketchbook that i don’t show anyone else aside from you.
Because I am a logo design channel where I will draw the worst ideas in the world generally speaking when I’ve drawn an idea that works and I’ve known that I’ve just drawn it in under a minute. I know that it’s so simple that it’s going to work and if it fits all the criteria of it being appropriate then that logo is gonna work.
Tip number four is geometric all the best logos are geometric and that means that all the shapes inside of them were based upon geometry including the apple logo is based mainly on circles.
And that is why it looks so simple we look at targets logos it’s made of circles the Twitter bird is made of circles.
A lot of logos like DPD in the UK made of squares all these shapes are simple so if you’re struggling to come up with an idea start with the very simple shapes the square the circle the triangle the rectangle all these shapes work very well.
Tip number five is to start with black and white we live in a day and age where logos are mostly seen on screens so we can have them in any color that we like but the problem with this is that when we’re designing a logo that will have color on it we start to put the color on first so that means that we can start to illustrate more inside the logo rather than show and give an illusion of color inside the logo.
Let me explain if you have a logo that’s got two colors in it or three colors or three different shades or tones of the same color. You can actually show and give the illusion of highlights and dark spots in that logo to create more of a 3d effect. But you can actually do this with just black and white and the reason why we do it with just black and white is that it we use negative space instead of using tones to create highlights or to give the illusion of depth in the logo we should be using black and white and using negative space to do this as it simplifies the design down now a lot of you may not agree with this because you probably design logos like that which is absolutely fine but make sure that you’re using negative space correctly is an important part of logo design.
Tip number six following on from the last one is consistency in negative space. I review a lot of logo designs and a lot of them are from amateur logo designers some of them are from professional ones as well and a lot of them are pretty good but the one mistake that I see all the time is inconsistent shapes or spacing inside of the logo. A logo is generally derived from positive space which is the black or the color version of the logo and then anything that’s blanked out is the negative space.
I see tons of logos that have inconsistent negative space because the designer doesn’t believe or understand or maybe they’ve just forgotten that the negative space is just as important as the positive one I’m going to use target’s logo again for this reason why the circle in the middle is in the middle where it is because there’s enough contrast in the negative space from the outer circle to the inner one.
So no matter how scaled down it is you can still see the bull’s eye if the middle circle in the target’s logo is any bigger and you scale the logo down you wouldn’t see very much of the negative space so exaggerating the negative space and balancing it out and being consistent with it for its scale and size is very important.
The final one number seven is the drawing test let’s say you’ve designed a logo and you think it looks amazing but you need to test it before you send it to your client what do you do well the most effective and I would say probably one of the most easiest ways to do this is print off that logo onto a piece of paper or just show them on a phone or whatever give it to your friend for one minute to look at tell them to look at that logo and try and remember it later on go back to that friend a few hours later with the pen and paper in hand and ask them to see if they can remember to draw that logo well your friend will probably will be able to draw the logo if it works well if it’s a good logo but to make sure it’s a very good logo keep in mind how long they take to sketch that logo back if that friend or whoever it sketches the logo in less than a minute when they come back to you then it’s a very functional memorable and easy logo which will be very good for the client.