When starting a small business, getting branding right is incredibly important. Branding demonstrates business culture and provides potential customers with insight into your company before they ever interact with it. Great branding also makes your business recognisable and memorable.
Good branding is essential if you want to succeed.
Your company logo is a crucial element of your branding and the key to your branding success. Just look at all the major and memorable brands you know, and you’ll see a powerful logo design at the centre of their branding strategy. From Apple to Amazon, Nike to Netflix, you should never underestimate the weight behind good business logo design.
But if small business logo design is so important, how do you get it right?
The last thing you want to do is waste an opportunity and squander a chance to catch the attention of your target audience. Mint Formations has extensive experience in UK limited company logo design. We know what it takes to design a great small business logo, and we’ve put it all into this guide for you.
Ready to design the perfect logo for your business?
Jump to what you want to know:
- The Benefits of a Professional Company Logo
- How to Design a Business Logo in 7 Steps
- Logo Design Tips for Creating the Perfect Logo
- Start Designing Your Business Logo Today.
The Benefits of a Professional Company Logo
Designing a high-quality logo for your brand takes time, effort and money. So before diving into the specific elements of logo design, it’s worth getting to grips with the benefits of a professional logo and why it’s worth the investment.
Every year more and more companies launch around the world. In fact, in 2021, more than 800,000 new businesses were launched in the UK alone. According to the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, there are around 5.5 million businesses in the UK. That’s a lot of competition, which makes having a recognisable brand identity essential.
When you’re starting a business, it’s easy to put designing your logo low on your list of priorities. But your company’s logo plays a vital role in your brand identity. It serves as the visual representation of your brand and core values. By taking the time to create a recognisable and memorable logo, you can enjoy these benefits:
Lasting First Impressions
Your logo is often the first thing your customers see. Whether on your website, social media or a physical shopfront, it’s their first impression of your brand. While first impressions aren’t always correct, they stick, and it takes a lot of effort to change somebody’s impression down the line.
This is due to a psychological tendency called the Primacy Effect. This effect causes us to recall primary information better than information we receive later on. This means that if you have a well-designed, professional logo, your brand will appear trustworthy and reliable on first impression, which is what customers will remember.
Brand Recognition
A unique, memorable logo is crucial for brand recognition. It helps your company discover a distinct identity in an increasingly competitive market. A well-designed logo becomes a mental shortcut for customers to identify your products and services.
Just think about the Golden Arches — we don’t need to mention the brand because you’re probably already picturing the restaurant and food. That’s the power of a good logo, and while you probably won’t get to the heights of McDonald’s, you can recreate that brand recognition with your own customer base.
Cross-Platform Consistency
When you start a business, your logo is probably one of the first things you’ll design. Creating a professional logo will lay the groundwork for the rest of your brand and make consistency across all your platforms simple. You can use the same fonts and colours across your website, social media, print materials and adverts.
By doing this, you’ll present customers with a unified brand image and create a seamless experience for them. This reinforces your brand and makes it more memorable. It also helps to build customer trust and familiarity with your brand.
Establishing Loyalty
While gaining new customers is always good, retaining existing customers and building loyalty is just as important. Customers becoming more familiar with your logo and what it represents makes them more likely to develop a sense of loyalty. A strong logo can evoke positive associations and emotions and make customers more likely to choose you over your competitors.
Loyal customers are vital to your success. Loyal customers often become brand advocates meaning they share their positive experiences with others. This can be through word of mouth, reviews or on social media and helps to expand your customer base.
As you can see, there are a lot of advantages to having a strong, professional logo. But unless you’re starting a graphic design company, you might wonder what you need to include in your logo and how to design one…
How to Design a Business Logo in 7 Steps
When you’re starting a new business, you have two options when it comes to designing your logo:
- Design it yourself
- Hire someone to design it.
Both are valid options and have their merits, but regardless of which one you choose, it’s good to know what goes into designing a logo. Even if you hire a designer, knowing the process can help you find the right design service.
We’ve outlined the seven steps for designing a logo for your business.
1. Step 1: Researching and Brainstorming
As tempting as it is to dig out your sketchbook and start designing your logo immediately, hold the fort (for now). The first thing you need to do is research. Begin by gathering information on:
- Your target audience’s preferences
- Your competitor logos
- Industry design trends.
By taking a look at what your customers like and what’s happening across your industry, you’ll be able to understand what works and what doesn’t.
After that, you’ll need to explore your own brand’s values, mission and USPs. While you’re doing this, you can create a rough list of ideas that reflect your brand. This is just your initial research, so nothing is set in stone. For example, if your company is big on sustainability, you might consider nature-inspired elements in your logo.
During this stage, it’s also worth creating a scrapbook or mood board of things you like about other logos or brands and what you want to include in yours.
Step 2: Exploring Design Styles
With your brainstorming session out of the way, it’s time to get into the design specifics. The first thing you’ll need to choose is a design style. Picking a style that reflects your brand is crucial, so explore different styles.
Here are some common design styles for logos:
- Minimalist — These are simple, clean, modern designs that focus on essential elements. Think Apple and Nike. They feature a limited colour palette, geometric shapes and negative space.
- Vintage — These are perfect for heritage brands; they’re classic, timeless and nostalgic designs that evoke a sense of history and tradition. A great example of this is Coca-Cola, with its ornate details, custom typography and classic style.
- Abstract — Abstract logos use shapes, lines or patterns to visually represent a brand’s identity. Good examples of this are BP and Pepsi, whose logos are unique and artistic.
- Emblematic — Emblematic logos convey a sense of heritage, authority and trust by using a symbol or icon within a badge or shield. Great examples of this style are often used by car and bike companies like Harley-Davidson and Porsche.
These are by no means the only design styles you can choose from, and there are countless brands that don’t fit into a particular style. By exploring your different style options, you can start working out what you like and don’t like.
Step 3: Choosing Your Colours
Next up is picking the colours for your logo. You might not realise it, but colours play a massive role in conveying emotions and brand personality. If you think about some of the most famous brands, you associate them with a colour.
We won’t get too deep into it, but a whole branch of psychology is about colours and how they affect our emotions. Below you’ll find an outline of what different colours represent and some famous brands that use them to help you when you’re picking out your logo colours:
- Red — Passion, energy and urgency (Coca-Cola, Netflix)
- Green — Growth, eco-friendliness and health (Starbucks, Wholefoods)
- Blue — Trust, stability and professionalism (IBM, Facebook)
- Yellow — Optimism, happiness and creativity (McDonald’s, Nikon)
- Orange — Friendliness, enthusiasm and energy (Fanta, Amazon)
- Purple — Sophistication, luxury and spirituality (Cadbury, Hallmark)
- Black — Elegance, power and sophistication (Chanel, Adidas)
- White — Purity, simplicity and cleanliness (Tesla, The White Company).
When you’re picking your colours, try to limit yourself to two or three colours maximum. This helps to give your logo a clean appearance. It’s also worth trying to pick complementary colours. You can use a tool like Coolors to find colours that work together.
Step 4: Finding Your Font
By this stage, you should have a rough idea of the logo styles and colours you like. Next up is choosing your typography. The font you choose will be a critical element of your logo, and it helps to convey your brand’s personality and message.
Choosing a font is one of the most challenging choices when you’re designing your logo, as there are so many. Did you know that there are over 200,000 fonts available? To help you narrow it down, here’s a rundown of the different font styles you can choose from:
- Serif — Classic, traditional, authoritative fonts with small decorative strokes at the end of each character. Examples include Times New Roman, Georgia, and Garamond.
- Sans-serif — Modern, clean, straightforward fonts without decorative strokes. Examples include Helvetica, Arial, and Futura.
- Script — Elegant, personal, creative fonts that mimic cursive handwriting. Examples include Lobster, Pacifico, and Allura.
- Display — Bold, distinctive, attention-grabbing fonts designed for large-format use. Examples include Impact, Bebas Neue, and Playbill.
When choosing fonts, try to limit yourself to one or two fonts and remember to think about how they will scale to different sizes. If you want to use more than one font, you can use a site like FontPair to help you find complimentary fonts.
Top tip: If you’re browsing another site and love the font, you can use the WhatFont? extension to find out the font’s name.
Step 5: Sketching Initial Ideas
Once you’ve got an idea of your fonts, colours and design style, you can finally get out your sketchbook and start doodling. Don’t panic if you’re not great at drawing — you’re just trying to get the concept down at this stage.
This stage aims to explore as many concepts and layouts as possible. Quantity is key here, as the more ideas you sketch, the better chance you have of finding the perfect logo. Here are a few tips to help you get started:
- Warm-up — Start with a quick warm-up by sketching anything that comes to mind. Don’t stop to judge your work. This stage is all about getting into the creative mood.
- Experiment — Create as many small sketches of different concepts as you can. Experiment with different shapes, elements and compositions. Don’t forget to think outside the box.
- Combine elements — By this stage, you’ll have an idea of what works, so start combining those elements and seeing if they work together. Try mixing up the sizing of different elements and seeing what works.
While rushing through this stage is tempting, take your time and keep at it. Once you’ve got a good collection of sketches, take a step back and analyse what you’ve drawn. If you can, leave the sketches for a day or two and come back to them fresh. When you return to them, look for common themes, shapes and ideas.
Step 6: Digitise Your Ideas
Once you’ve analysed your sketches and figured out what you like and don’t like, it’s time to swap your pencil for a mouse. Pick out the most promising concept from your drawings and make them digital. There are lots of graphic design software options out there, but here are a few of the best ones:
- Canva — Canva is a free, easy-to-use online design platform with many fonts, templates, and design elements. Ideal for beginners.
- Adobe Illustrator — Illustrator is the industry standard for design and has a comprehensive set of tools and features. It’s great for logo design and is available through a subscription as part of Adobe Creative Cloud.
- Sketch — Sketch is a Mac-exclusive, user-friendly design application. It has extensive features and is available via a one-time purchase.
- Figma — Figma is a browser-based design platform that allows real-time collaboration. It has a wide range of design features and has a free subscription option.
Take the time to find software that works for you and fits your skill level. Once you’ve picked one, you can start bringing your ideas to life. Remember to keep trying different designs until you find a few you’re happy with.
Step 7: Feedback and Refinements
Once you’ve three to five designs you’re happy with, it’s time to get feedback. Getting honest feedback is a great way to determine if your logo is suitable for your brand, effectively communicates your brand message and, importantly, looks good.
Speak to your friends and family for their thoughts and opinions on your logo options. Try not to limit yourself to one group of people and, if you can, get the opinions of your target audience. If you want more professional feedback, ask a graphic designer or branding expert for their opinions.
Remember to make note of any opinions on your logo options and be open to constructive criticism. Once you’ve gathered all the feedback, you should refine your logos and narrow down your options. You might need a few rounds of feedback to get it spot on, but it’s well worth the effort.
By incorporating feedback into your design, you’ll be able to create a logo that not only looks good but works for your target audience. Once you’re happy with your logo and ready to move forward with it, there are a few more things you can do:
- Test the logo in different contexts (social media, website, print materials, etc.)
- Prepare your logo files (JPEG, PNG, SVG, etc.)
- Create a logo style guide (colour codes, fonts, spacing, etc.)
After that, you’ll be good to go and ready to move on to the next stage of starting your business.
Logo Design Tips and Tricks for Creating the Perfect Logo
If you’ve got to this stage and your head is spinning a little, don’t panic. Designing your company logo is a process, but anyone can do it. We’ve put together some tips and tricks for creating the perfect logo so you can feel confident creating yours.
Bring Personality and Brand Identity
Your business is unique. It has its own culture, community and personality — use your logo to convey this. Small business logo design should match the company’s direction and industry.
If you sell high-intensity sports equipment, you want a big, brash and powerful logo to suit. If you’re a professional legal firm, you’ll likely aim for something more refined. Customers want to see the business behind the logo.
Keep It Simple
You only have to look at the most successful businesses worldwide to understand that the best business logo design is simple. British Airways, Cadbury, Nintendo — they’re all massively influential brands with very straightforward designs.
Why? Simple logos are memorable and easy to pick out from a crowd, even when used in tight marketing space.
Intricate small business logo design might look fantastic on a large billboard, but when shrunk down and squeezed into the header on a letter, magazine advert, or mobile phone app icon, it becomes much less impressive; and often just messy and cluttered.
Be Creative with Small Business Logo Design
Logos are about memorability. They should captivate people and focus their attention. Your logo is a very simple but effective communication tool. Most people will skim right over it if it’s boring and generic.
Basic stock clip-art images aren’t going to get noticed. Avoid cliches and designs that have no impact. Get creative and make your design unique.
Don’t Rush Your Logo Design
If you can avoid redesigning your logo, we certainly recommend it. Once you’ve built your branding, a logo design change can be expensive in terms of changing business materials and confusing for customers.
To make sure you don’t need to change your small business logo design in the future, invest plenty of time in the design phase now. Really think about the design carefully, try a few options and get feedback.
Make Your Logo Clear
A logo will not inform customers of everything your business does, but you want to give them some sense of your industry if possible. Not all logo designs conform to this rule, but it can be a great tool if utilised well.
Food retailer Wasabi uses sushi rolls in its logo design to convey its specialism in Japanese cooking. This can grab attention and instantly let consumers know they’ve found something interesting.
Start Designing Your Business Logo Today
Your logo is integral to your business marketing strategy, so make sure it’s fantastic from day one.
Working with professional small business logo designers is a great option if you aren’t confident in your design abilities or lack the tools/software to create a dynamic and enticing modern business logo.
At Mint Formations, we offer professional small-business logo design. Reach out to our team today to discuss your logo ideas, and we’ll help you develop a design that really speaks to your customers.
