Consumers only take 10 seconds to form a first impression of a brands logo, however; they require 5-7 impressions to recognize the logo. A Logo is the most essential element as it represents your brand’s visual identity. Regardless of the fact how great your product or service is if your logo is not professionally designed, it will have an adverse effect on your company’s reputation. Your logo is powerful enough to tell your prospect audience about who you are. Designing a compelling yet unique logo is a challenging errand.
Therefore, in this article, we are going to shed light on 9 critical mistakes that you must avoid while creating a logo for your brand.
- Employing Too Many Fonts
Creating a state-of-the-art logo requires a considerate effort in deciding adequate font’s style along with the prowess to deploy right number of fonts that precisely communicates the intended message. This is the recurrent mistake that designers often make while creating a logo. They try to use multiple fonts to convey several details about the brand, which eventually lead to an excessively ornate design that ultimately undermines brand identity. Therefore, you need to be cautious when it comes to using fonts for your logo. Preferably, an ideal logo must employ only one or two fonts. Remember – Less is often more. Knowing about the psychology of the fonts can help you in font selection process.
- Inappropriate Typography
This is the most crucial element that you need to focus on while creating a logo design as typography has the power to either make or break your design. Logo designers often make the mistake of adding too many typefaces to make their design attractive and appealing but unfortunately, they end up designing a logo that looks unprofessional and vague. All typefaces have their unique personality and being a designer you need to ensure that you select a typeface that perfectly aligns with your brand’s message and icons facets. The key is to keep it as simple as possible. Avoid using ultra-thin fonts and pay heed towards spacing and sizing.
- Focusing More On Trends
A well-designed logo should be unique and timeless. It is possible if you are not slavishly following the current trends. With the drastic evolution of design industry, trends are soon going to change due to which it is necessary that you do not make your logo based on those ongoing trends. Choose a design that is timeless and versatile. Focus on creating a unique identity of your brand through your logo. You may derive inspiration from those trends while ensuring that you make a design that is captivating and enduring enough to attract audience.
- Poor Color Palette
Designers often ignore the importance behind the psychology of colors, which is extremely crucial to create an impressive logo that attracts potential customers. You must select colors that perfectly resonate with the personality of your brand. Preferably, you can make use of a tool, for instance, Adobe’s Color to create a color palette and to examine color combination that smoothly fits with your brand’s overall personality.
- Lack of Design Process
To create a logo it is essential to follow certain steps that help you in building an effective design of the logo. Designing a logo without any prior knowledge of concepts will lead to a poor design that will have a bad impact on your brand identity. You need to ensure that you follow a procedure while building a logo for your brand. Research is the most essential element as it enables you to comprehend the creative brief that you are supposed to keep in mind. Once you are clear about the brief, the next step is to explore and sketch the design. Further, you need to put it into vector form and move towards its final stage of presentation where you decide the colors, font’s style etc. You can also derive inspiration from the case studies of other logo designers to know how they go about with their logo designing process.
- Unduly Complex & Abstract Design
There is no doubt in the fact that simplicity is the key to brilliance. Same goes when you are designing a logo. Trying to portray too many details through your logo will make it unrecognizable. You need to ensure that your logo is simple and effective enough for your target audience to remember. If you employ multiple colors, fonts and icons it will tragically make your logo look complicated enough to make your audience confuse and misrepresents your organization. Therefore, you need to create a logo that is not too ordinary and not too complex while gaining a perfect balance that strives to make your logo versatile and work in more mediums.
- Copying Someone Else’s Logo
Stealing ideas from top brands has unfortunately become a trend now. It is the biggest mistake any logo designer could ever make as it adversely affects the branding and positioning of the company. You need to ensure that your logo is unique enough to outperform competitors and capable to dominate in the market. Creating a logo that is similar to any other brand will not just belittle your design but also it will make you worthless in front of your prospect audience. Focus on ideas that enable you to create an edge over other brands.
- Inordinate Use of Special Effects
The art is to create a logo that vigorously withstands its core meaning and design. For that reason, you must avoid exerting excessive colors and special effects. As it will more likely to confuse your design while making it vague. The keystone lies in creating a logo that is enduring and adaptable. It is suggested to design logo in black and white color initially and afterwards add special effects. This technique enables you to pay attention to the shape and concept of the logo. Avoid using drop shadows, embossing or additional layer patterns. Overdoing color will make your logo lose its ability to be versatile.
- Use of Stock Images
To make your brand unique and stand-out it is essential that your logo must personify brand core values. Originality is the key to business success. Graphic designers who make use of stock image sites for their logo eventually lose their creative spirit, as many people are using those images hence making it more generic. Consequently, you need to avoid overused re-sellable templates as it will let you lose your brand identity which leads to poor positioning in the market. In addition, it will more likely to give a cheap impression on your prospect audience.
The field-tested tips mentioned-above will help you in sharpening your logo design skills. In addition, if you make a deliberate effort to avoid these mistakes it will help you create a timeless yet compelling logo that will outlast. Remember that a well-designed logo can contribute positively to your business success and allow you to attract potential customers while a substandard logo will turn them off.
