How to Design a Memorable Logo

The first step to creating a visual identity is designing a logo. Over time, your logo will become the visual identifier of you and your services. When prospects and clients see your logo, they’ll recognize it and remember you. While names can be difficult to remember, graphical images are much more memorable.

The other day, for instance, I handed my business card to another professional at a networking event. Though we had never met, she had seen marketing materials from my company before, recognized the company logo and visual elements, and asked me if we had met previously. That’s the power of creating a visual identity. Even when your prospects have never met you, they can still identify you by your marketing materials.

Your logo is not your brand, a description of your business, or your USP. It’s a representation of what the sum total of each of those represents. In other words, your logo is a symbol of you and your service - and thus derives its meaning by the quality of your service.

A good logo will:

• Create credibility. Virtually all businesses today create some type of logo or identification mark that they use throughout their marketing materials.
• Provide clear identification. When prospects and clients see your logo time after time, they’ll start to associate your logo with the materials they see - and eventually you and your services.
• Communicate your core message. Good logos convey a message or feeling associated with you and your services.

That said, logos don’t become successful overnight. If you create one tomorrow, it may take years for your prospects to start associating your logo with you and your services. Yet once that association begins to occur, you’ll have a powerful way to differentiate yourself from your competition. At that point, you’ll have a brand.

Logos come in all shapes and colors. Here are some common types:

• Wordmark - A wordmark uses your company’s name in a proprietary font. Large companies pay top dollar to have a font or specific letters of their name designed for them. Examples of Wordmarks include Mobil, Microsoft, and Sony.
• Symbols - Symbols tend to be simple, stylistic icons that represent a concept or physical object. Nike’s swoosh and Apple’s apple are examples of symbols.
• Monogram - A monogram is a design that includes one or more letters of a name. Examples include Hewlett Packard, Electronic Arts, and Adobe.

Many modern logos combine some use some combination of the three - such as a Wordmark with a graphical component like Amazon.com’s arrow, or Symantec’s spherical ball. Others use colors and font to stand apart, such as Google or eBay.