Designing a Logo

Top 5 Factors to Consider when Designing a Logo

Why are Brand Logo Designs Important?

Customers form their impression of a brand within the first few seconds, and the logo plays a huge part in it. It is not only an image, but it is a form of recognition for your company. It allows customers to easily recognise you. Good logo designs will also be able to successfully upscale your brand and consumers will have a higher perceived value of your brand.

 

Here are what your brand should take note of when designing your logo:

  1. Express your Individuality

Your logo should express your brand’s personality. Logos are one of the first things that customers notice about your business. Therefore, it is always great to showcase a little personality through your logo. The purpose and reason for the business should be able to be communicated to the audience through the logo. If you do not have an in-house designing team, this is where a logo designer comes into play. A great logo designing team will be able to understand you and your company, as well as successfully bring those qualities out. For example, if your company is using eco-friendly products, your logo could incorporate a picture of a helping hand or a tree – like a logo shown below.

Factors to Consider When Designing a Logo: Timberland

  1. Audience

It is important to know who is your target audience – who is your brand catered to and who needs to see your logo. This way, it is easier to design according to what appeals to your targeted demographic. Understanding your target audience also allows you to better know how to communicate your message effectively to them. You would know what they are interested in, and what kinds of design they would remember. Visually appealing designs are very important, and it is key to be remembered by your core audience. 

  1. Distinctive and Different

While keeping in mind to present your brand well in your logo, it is also important to be unique. People easily forget your brand if you look just like everyone else, but often remember those that are different and stands out. For instance, this Nike logo below is well-known and remembered by many – known as The Swoosh. This design was created for the brand to convey motion in its brand logo. Nike specialises in sports footwear and this logo is a prime example of accurately expressing one’s brand while being unique.

Factors to Consider When Designing a Logo: Nike

  1. Simplicity

You should not have an overly complex logo because it will cluster the mind of the customers. Complex logos are rarely good designs that will appeal to consumers. Therefore, it is always safer and more visually appealing if your brand logo is simple. For example, look at this logo by CNN.

Factors to Consider When Designing a Logo: CNN

  1. Timeless

 

The Apple logo is known for its simple and slick design. This timeless and minimal logo design was not visually appealing initially. The difference between the first and current logo is able to show you why it is important to simplify your logo and ensure that it will never be outdated. This relays the message that your products are timeless and never dated.

Factors to Consider When Designing a Logo: Apple

 

Mindsparkz:

Want to create your very own brand logo but do not have an in-house designing team? Mindsparkz will be perfect for you! Our designing team offer professional design and creative services, perfectly competent to cater to your various needs. The dedicated designers here will be able to assist your company gain a competitive edge against rivals. Feel free to contact us today for more enquiries on brand logos and how it can be the key to elevating your business.

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How to make Brand Guidelines for Marketing Departments

What are Brand Guidelines?

They are your brand’s visual style guide. Brand guidelines outline the details explaining your brand and how it works.

A typical brand guideline usually includes:

  • Cover page
  • Colour pallets
  • The inspiration behind your logo and brand
  • The minimum size of your logo
  • Font of logo
  • Clear Space
  • Incorrect usage
  • How it looks like on different imagery/business cards/different products

 

 

Here is a brief example of Mindsparkz’s brand guideline that you can refer to this as a template:
E-Photo-blog-1-1

 

A cover page: The cover page should be simple and clean. Including your corporate name and ‘Brand Guideline’ would suffice.

 

Introduction to your brand: Explain to your consumers or employees what your brand is about. What can you offer to consumers? Why should they engage you? This is when you should give an overview of your brand – part of brand identification.

 

Brand Logo: Logos are important and will appear at least 90% of the time. You should explain the inspiration of the logo and why this logo represents your brand. Well-designed logos will upscale your brand and relay to clients that you are professional and reliable.

 

 

 

2

Colour: List the colours that you use for your logo – Pantone shade, CMYK, etc. These colours should be cohesive with the theme across your entire brand.

 

Inspiration of the logo: The logo is meant to reflect that whatever that comes to mind and thought of were sketched. All products produced here are being sketched by our product designers from scratch before being sent to being manufactured.

 

Minimum Size: There needs to be a minimum size for your brand logo so it will not be printed too small and illegible.

 

 

 

3

 

Fonts: This will be the font you use across your brand – pamphlets, websites, blogs, etc. This should be uniform to create consistency.

 

Clear Space: Set a minimum clear area on each side of your logo that will be clear of any visuals and texts. This is to ensure distinction and legibility of the brand logo.

 

Incorrect Usage: The logo should be used as it is, no stretching, no cropping, etc. It is common for logos to be distorted when printed wrongly or on a different surface.

 

 

 

 

If you want to have a more detailed brand guideline, brands can also cover the history of the brand, along with the brand vision, brand personality, key values, as well as design and website layouts. Few more materials you can include are brand messages to consumers are brand voice and imagery. These are a few general examples of how a brand guideline would comprise of, however, feel free to add more information!

 

 

Why the need for brand guidelines?

Brand guidelines are easily overlooked. However, they are extremely important for every brand to be able to build a strong brand identity.

 

Brand guidelines establish consistent branding. Some of which includes the colour pallets, fonts, and the tone of voice (such as compassionate, friendly, sincere, knowledgeable), etc. Consistency in branding is critical for corporates. Inconsistent branding comes across to customers that you are not professional and unreliable – which is not a good look. Consumers will then be confused and not trust your brand.

 

Brand guidelines allow you to convey your purpose, brand personality, promises and messages to the people. This displays an image of professionalism, thus creating value because your brand is a cohesive organisation. Not only so, demonstrating consistency helps raise brand recognition and builds brand reputation.

 

Building your brand reputation is a challenging process and it is crucial to have an idea of what represents the brand and yourself. This way, people can easily spot you when they see your products in public. For example, consumers can simply identify us because of the classic blue that we used throughout our branding and designing.

 

Lastly, employees come and go. It is impossible to expect them to know everything about your brand. This brand guideline will be extremely useful in educating them. That way, you can assure that even without the marketing manager, employees are still able to use the correct logo size, correct colour, correct font, etc.

 

 

Mindsparkz:

Want to create your very own brand guidelines and website layout but do not have an in-house designing team? Mindsparkz will be perfect for you! Our designing team offer professional design and creative services, perfectly competent to cater to your needs. The dedicated designers here will be able to assist your company gain a competitive edge. Feel free to contact us today for more enquiries.

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Design Retainer Service

The Benefits Of Design Retainer Service in the Promotional Industry

Have you ever considered how your business could benefit from a full design department? A design retainer program might just be for you.

 

What is a design retainer service?

This is a design service offered by Mindsparkz for clients who want to work together on more than just one product, for a set rate. Basically, clients are “pre-ordering” our designers’ time. This long-term relationship allows Mindsparkz to become familiar with a brand and help in executing long-term promotional goals.

Hence, this retainer relationship allows clients to instantly tap into the resources of an experienced and skilled design department without having to build one themselves.

 

So, Where Does A Design Retainer Service Comes Into Play In The Promotional Industry?

The promotional industry has many facets of business that each require expertise in their own way. Project managers need to work with suppliers in order to make the right product, in the right timeframe, at the right cost. The sales team needs to make sure that there is a buyer for these, and that their expectations are met or exceeded.

 

Designers in the industry need to cover a workload that spans all stages of the timeline. From product deck conception, branded product mock-ups, client presentations, CAD development, artwork approval documents, packaging design, and so much more.

 

In some agencies, there are no on-staff designers with promotional product specialization. In these cases, sales and project management staff have to wear the design cap and do their best to handle what they can – while individually outsourcing the rest. This not only puts a strain on the staff’s workload, but also uses their time to perform tasks that they may not be well suited for. In the end, it’s these inefficiencies that cost companies hard-earned dollars.

 

And this is precisely where the design retainer program comes into play to address the above concerns.

 

Design Retainer Service

Mindsparkz Designers

How Does Mindsparkz’s Design Retainer Service Benefits Your Promotional Marketing Efforts?

Firstly, you get access to our designers who are professionals in promotional products. This leads to better promotional marketing content.

 

Secondly, with subsequent projects, you save time working with our designers who already understand your brand. Furthermore, this long-term relationship with our Mindsparkz team supports experimentation and optimization in your promotional campaigns.

 

Lastly, you save money by booking time in advance compared to budgeting projects one at a time. Moreover, with more hours committed to our retainer program, you get to enjoy a discounted rate. This means more budget to make your promotional efforts shine!

 

To Conclude…

Looking for a long-term partner to help accomplish your ongoing design work? Then it might be time to consider taking your relationship with a creative design agency to the next level.

 

Here at Mindsparkz, we are a creative design agency brimming with ideas for products and services. Our rich experience in the promotional industry means that you can enter into a retainer program to work with our intuitive team for excellent promotional solutions! We take immense pride in our product, web and graphic design services which have a proven track record of delivering excellent results.

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