5 Tips on How to Create a Great Logo for Your Startup

Whether you are struggling to make a logo for your business yourself, or working with a professional logo designer, here are five basic principles to consider:

1. Be clever and enticing. Best logos are filled with obvious and hidden positive meanings. Try to incorporate a little mind game, pun, or another witty interpretation of concepts into the design.

Recently, when designing for 10 Adventures, Onix team includedan X-shaped element into the new logo. The X represents both the Roman number 10 and a mark on a hiking or treasure map, alluding to adventures. It’s also a common reference to ‘unknown’ (e.g., Planet X), which drives the symbol’s meaning deeper to destinations, exploration, and discoveries.

2. Choose, or preferably develop, easy-to-read fonts to add deeper meaning to text and give your emblem a unique feel.

Take a look at Onix’ own logo. The ‘X’ actually derives from the initial ‘O’: the circle was cut and the halves were rearranged into an ‘X’. This brings to mind cells, chromosomes, creation, development, and evolution - which is perfectly in line with our tagline. The slightly futuristic font not only simplifies the look, but also renders the spirit of the young forward-looking company.?

3. Keep the logo as simple as possible. Simplest shapes prove to be most powerful and the best to stand the test of time. Opt for clean monoline designs using elegant shapes, fonts, and negative space that focus on a single message. For instance, the underlying round and square shapes in Onix’ sign are associated with the company’s flexibility and stability, as well as the human and technical aspects of its operations.

4. Make sure the chosen colors carry right meanings and communicate the right ideas about your brand. Do a color study, look at your design in one-, two- and three-color versions.?

The yellow in 10 Adventures’ brand is the color of joy, energy, optimism, and adventurousness. Onix’ blues reinforce the message of professionalism and success. But remember that a great logo should function as well in grayscale. (We can go as far as to say that a perfect logotype is a no-color logotype.)

5. Avoid the cliché and short-lived design fads. Only a unique concept of a logo makes it instantly recognizable, and only original art can make an impressive statement about your business.

Once you have developed a well-designed symbol, apply it on- and off-line wherever your business name is mentioned to build your image and raise the company's visibility. Start with using it as an avatar or a cover/background picture for the business’ social media accounts. For email marketing campaigns, add a small logo to the email signature section.

On your website, place the new emblem on each page and make it clickable to lead to the homepage. Use it as the favicon (a small image that appears next to the URL of a web page in a browser). If there is none yet, engage a designer to develop a new landing page or a fully customized WordPress theme for the company. It is in such trifles that the success of creating a logo for a company, startup, or brand lies.

Incorporate the design into your business card, a presentation template, documents like invoices, receipts, headed paper, and customer service materials, as well as notebooks, mugs, T-shirts, and other merchandise promoting the business. Make sure to bring a pile with you when attending the next industry conference or exhibition. Integrate the new emblem into interior design of the office and other elements of your branding!

A new symbol or a whole website is cause for celebration, so make an event of it! Throw a party for the team and loyal clients, or run a competition on the new website to motivate people to visit it. Use any opportunity for creating a buzz around your business on that occasion!

To Sum Up

A strategically developed logotype is a positive and recognizable symbol of a business. It is particularly important for new entrepreneurs, but if you wish to take your existing business, service/product, or even yourself to the next level, it’s high time to refresh your emblem or to get a brand new (!) one. But if at least one point matches your needs, be sure to think about creating a logo for your business (startup, enterprise... whatever)

Whether developing or re-designing a logo for your business, keep the customers and the nature of your brand in mind. Make sure the logo is simple and clean, memorable and distinctive. The shapes, fonts, and colors should look cohesive and support the concept. The emblem should be scalable and easy to reproduce virtually on everything.

Onix Design is passionate about brand identity and logos as much as about mobile and web design. If you contemplate anything, why not discuss how we can cooperate for the successful future of your product or business?

(Special thanks to Richard Campbell, Founder/CEO of 10 Adventures, for the kind permission to mention the logo design and to use the images in this article)