Getting Your Logo Done Right

Understanding the power and need for a professionally designed logo is an important step in getting your brand off and running. Here are some things to think about before you get started.

Step 1: Understand What a Logo Represents
A logo is just one facet of your company’s brand, however it is what most people associate with first. When you think of Target, you can instantly recall their logo, it's the "face" of their brand. A logo helps define your business, what you do and what you stand for. A logo should inspire, motivate, create expectation and then deliver those expectations.


Step 2: Seek a Professional
Understanding Step 1 is key to realizing the power of your logo in relation to your brand. So if you’re doing searches on the Internet for "logo design" or worse "cheap logo design," you're missing the magnitude of a brand-defining logo. If it's too good to be true, then folks, it is. A logo should cost you more than $49. You've spent time and money writing a business plan and building your brand, now give it the support it needs to fly.

If you don't know where to begin, ask around, seek out reports for "Best Of" businesses in your city, or go social and get recommendations from Twitter friends. Do a more concentrated search like "advertising agency, (your city)" and interview some of those agencies and designers.

Step 3: Avoid The Easy Way Out
Stock imagery is a great resource for its purpose. We often use it for layouts in brochures and websites. But please DO NOT use stock images as part of your logo. No matter how cool the imagery, thousands of people download stock photos everyday. If your logo is supposed to uniquely represent your brand – it's going to be hard to claim that uniqueness if your logo has the same "stock" icon as your competitor. There's no faster way to discredit your brand then to try and do things in an unprofessional, ho-hum, easy-way-out manner.

On that note, if you are looking for a logo, then we can assume you are not a designer. So let a professional agency/designer do what they do best (build your brand), and you do what you do best (run your business). When those two things work in tandem, Step 1 is accomplished much more effectively and efficiently.

Step 4: Set A Budget for Your Logo
Keeping Step 1 through 3 in mind, put together a dollar figure for what you want to spend on your logo. Other things to consider include how many logo concepts you want to be presented, the number of revisions that might take place, the amount of due diligence research needed, etc. Need help coming up with an accurate dollar figure? Let us know and we can give you an estimate based on our professional  experience.