Many of us are looking for ways to be more independent financially and often that means starting our own business. That can mean something like registering a company or it can mean operating solely through social media and being self-employed. Either way, when you want to attract new clients to your business, you want to portray your new venture in a professional light. That all starts with a logo.
A logo is the foundation of your brand as it showcases your business and gives people a taste of what to expect. Ideally, your logo will communicate not only your business name (or your name) but what you do.
It is incredibly easy to create a logo these days with the free tools available. However, creating a good logo is slightly more challenging. A lot of these tools offer you ready-made logos that have some sort of graphic and then whatever name you have input previously. These can look good but they often aren’t memorable. On top of that, people are becoming more familiar with what “free” logos look like.
The good news is that there are three simple steps to follow that will allow you to create a logo that is unique to your new venture and professional.
Company Name or Initials - The first thing to be clear with is what name you want for your new venture. If it is just a side hustle, it may be that you choose to use your personal name or initials. If you want to have a clear business persona so there is room to expand, then you need to come up with a name. That in itself can be a challenging job as you want it it be unique, professional, and memorable. If you are struggling to come up with names, you can try using a name generator although those are unreliable. Jot down words that reflect your business area, ethics, service, etc. Once you have those words written, you can start to play around with combinations until you come up with a name that you feel represents your business well.
Graphics that represent your business - graphics work well because they are memorable. The bigger companies can afford to hire a graphic designer to come up with options for turning the business name into a graphic itself (such as Bose or Dell). Some famous brands use a unique typeface to just have the brand name as the logo (such as Prada or Chanel). However, having a clear graphic in your logo gives you the opportunity to make something not only memorable but informative. For example, if you offer hair styling, you could use graphics of hair tools, or hair itself. If you are offering dog walking, you could use graphics of dogs, collars, parks, etc.
Combining the two - Once you have your business name and a few graphic options to use, that is when you can start playing around with ideas. It is easier to be creative when you just have a pen and paper in front of you. You can see how you want to the name to fit in with certain graphics. Going back to the example of a dog walking service, you could use a graphic of a collar and on the dog tag, you could put the business name. For the hair styling, you could use a pair of scissors and then put the business name along one of the scissor blades. Be mindful of where you will want this logo. If you plan on using social media a lot, you want to make sure the logo will fit nicely into the profile picture section. You can even have two versions (like Suzuki who have a recognisable ‘S’ logo which goes on the car but also a recognisable ‘Suzuki’ logo which goes on the promotional material).
When it comes to finally creating your logo digitally, you can use a few different tools depending on your level of experience. The easiest place to start is somewhere like Canva where they have a lot of graphics free to use and allow you to manipulate the images and fonts to achieve something similar to your sketches.
Equally, it’s a great place to start when you just want to try creating a logo without sketches but you have a logo concept. Let’s say you offer fitness classes online, you may want to see what graphics are available of weights, or gym equipment and then try to fit in your business name with what is available. If you do have a clear sketch of what you want your logo to look like, you can use a more professional tool like Inkscape. It’s slightly more complex as you have to design all of the graphics yourself but there are a lot of tutorials online to help you achieve your desired result!
At the end of the day, there is no real “perfect” logo; it just needs to be one that you feel accurately represents your brand. You can always change it if you’re not happy or make little changes. The most important thing is to remember that you can do it! You don’t need to spend any money to create something beautiful and professional. Let the logo designing begin!