How to Work with a Graphic Design Team on Making the Ideal Logo
Regardless if you’re launching your company website, blog, or social media page, there’s one visual element that you’ll want graphic design services to perfect: your company logo. It’s the one image that you’ll likely use across all your content, and the piece that will speak for your brand without the aid of any other marketing tool.
For these reasons, it is only imperative that you invest yourself in logo conceptualization and development. The following guidelines will help you stay up to task.
Define what you want
As the leader of your business, you best know what your brand stands for and what your logo should convey. Designers can tell you how it could look then make it happen, but only after you say what it should be like.
Is your business to sell gifts or crafts? Perhaps pastels can set the right tone—a choice which you are less likely to make if you sell other products like electronics.
Should the logo be cartoonized or geometric? That depends on whether you’re aiming to seem playful or prestigious.
Is a loopy hand-lettered font better than a vintage script? Again, that depends whether you’re appealing to young students or an older crowd.
Define your type of business, brand personality, and target audience, and designers can take their cue from there.
Provide examples
While designers have the skills to make your concepts come to life, they can’t read your mind. After explaining your brand, try to provide examples that reflect it.
Samples will not only provide points for inspiration or reference. More often than not, they will also give directions. For example, designers can better understand the style you prefer, depending on whether you show them a logo built purely on lettering (like Coca-Cola’s), on a symbol (like Apple’s), or on both (like Starbucks’).
To make things easier for both sides, designers could present you with general samples and you can pick the ones closest to what you want. Alternatively, you could also share examples of what you don’t want your logo to resemble.
Know the kind of feedback to give
Graphics designers always want specific feedback. It’s not enough to tell them “I don’t think this looks good enough” or “Can you give this more of a ‘wow’ factor?” Whatever the project, you need to explain what you feel could make a design more impressive. Is it a warmer tone of color, a bolder font type, or a different aesthetic style? Your call will ultimately move the design process forward.
When creating logos for online marketing, your feedback should also be directed towards optimizing designs for the web. For example, it’s always important to review whether a logo is adaptable—that is, that it can work well wherever it is placed: homepage header, user thumbnail, email banner, app icon, and so forth. Whenever you see an extra detail adding flourish to a proposed logo, you can ask: would it still have impact when seen as a profile picture on a mobile phone?
Teaming up with a content creation agency that specializes in both visual and online marketing can help keep your branding on track. No matter how well-versed your partner agency is, though, you’d still need to fulfill your role in the collaboration.