Acquiring the best domain name for your business and brand is only the beginning of the process to establish your brand. Your next step is to make the brand known and interact with your potential customers.
Setting up a temporary web site is a common approach with the idea being to “occupy” the space provided by your domain name. You’ll need a short statement about what’s to come, and not just a “coming soon” message. With a temporary website placeholder, you’re trying to achieve the following three things:
- Stake your ground on the internet
- Provide a mission statement, indicating this content is temporary
- Utilize a form to capture traffic and notify visitors when it’s live
At this early stage, don’t use a logo unless it’s been finalized. Most businesses often get ahead of the game and roll out a temporary image to go along with their brand. It’s not effective to display an unfinished image associated with your brand - disassociating from it will be hard for repeat visitors and clients.
A word of advice: Hire a professional brand and logo designer, who will be able to work with you to identify your target audience, develop the image you’re seeking to promote, and deliver a quality final product.
So here’s a quick guide for creating a concept that will eventually evolve into the final version of your business logo, and the five elements that it should embrace.
Element #1 - Keep it simple. Brand logos are not a series of hieroglyphic symbols and your business brand should not involve decoding what it stands for. Complexity does not indicate quality of services, and neither does “grandeur” or a design that is excessively busy.
Many successful brands rely on textual logos only, that have been edited to deliver the brand with stylized letters. Other designs incorporate graphic elements as accents, and some are solely graphic. The idea is to find the right balance between the text and graphics, this is the most important part of the design process.
Element #2 - Make it unique. Business logos that are confusingly similar to others can not only lead to customer confusion, they might lead to legal issues such as copyright infringement, and potential ensuing lawsuits.
Work closely with your graphic designer to leverage an approach that is not copied from another company’s brand. Once draft designs are presented to you, involve a team of reviewers to evaluate the uniqueness of the logo. When it comes to such feedback, multiple minds are better than one.
Element #3 - Make it memorable. Simplicity alone does not guarantee a great business logo, it has to stick in people’s minds visually and also phonetically. The combination of textual and image elements should be balanced and in harmony with the products and services the business will be providing.
Keep the use of colors in association with the overall design, and use a clean typeface, or a custom script for the textual part. Creating a memorable impact for your brand is as fundamental as the domain name you chose in the first place!
Element #4 - Make it relatable. There’s only one thing worse than a logo that doesn’t identify the business: a logo that mistakenly identifies it for another business. Getting the appropriate elements right, both textual and graphic, is important. Avoid generic or “cliche” elements such as globes, stick figures, swooshes, and other generic graphics used to describe a class of products.
The idea is that your logo should send a message directly linking your business to the services you provide, and does not confuse non-clients and clients alike about your direct market.
Element #5 - Make it adaptable. Last by equally important, is designing your business logo with a variety of surfaces and materials in mind. Your logo should be able to adapt to different sizes, and scale up or down gracefully. It should not lose its identity or recognition when displayed on business cards, applications, hats, t-shirts or other promotional items.
The design should be adaptable to the contrast of the medium, and display equally well in its original colors and in black and white.
By following these guidelines before, during and following the design of your business logo, your brand will complement your domain name on the road to success.
Want an iconic logo for your business that takes all these elements into account?
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