The Beginner's Guide to Creating a Logo for Your Website or Blog

Introduction

The current era of logo design began in the 1870s with the first abstract logo, the Bass red triangle.
Your logo is the visual representation of your brand—and everything it stands for. At a glance, it should reflect your brand’s personality and promise. Ideally, it will be memorable and stand out from the crowd. Consider iconic logos such as the Nike swoosh, Apple Computer’s simple apple or Target’s red bullseye. What comes to mind when you think of each one?

This guide was developed to help small business owners with no design experience understand how to create a logo. You’ll learn about the processes necessary to transfer your ideas onto paper, find out how to spot flaws in your concept and enable your primary idea to grow until it reaches a satisfying level of quality.

Although this may be new ground, you’ll probably learn a lot and enjoy the experience. So, let’s start from the beginning.

What is a logo?
A logo works much like your name. When you were born, your parents gave you a name that, over time, you infused with personality. Now, when people hear your name, they immediately think of you. And when people talk about you, your name evokes certain emotions and characteristics.

Whenever the name comes up, people immediately think “that funny party guy who has a deep voice” or “that blonde girl who has a quirky laugh and always dresses well.”

In the same vein, a logo is a symbolic representation of your brand identity. It carries vital information about who you are and what you do and causes people to feel a certain emotion. For example, BMW is associated with precision, quality vehicles and prestige, as many company executives drive their sedans. Nike is associated with high-level sports performance and durable shoes.

Why are logos important?
Logos give businesses an identity, but you need to understand why that is so important. The branding process has many different stages and elements. The design and proper usage of your logo are a big part of it.

Your job is to make sure people connect the dots and recognize your brand the second they see the logo. If that works, your marketing efforts will be much more effective. The fact is, most people build an emotional connection with the brands they’ve had positive experiences with, based on their history and personality.

When targeted consumers see your logo, they need to instantly recognize it and connect it with your brand values. Why is this important? Because approximately 65 percent of consumers said shared values attract them to a brand and to the specific products or services you offer. They also revealed that shared values help make your brand more memorable. The very next time they think about something related to your niche, your brand name and logo should be the first images that pop into their minds.

Your audience should be able to differentiate your logo from a series of different brand logos on a shelf and choose your product based on the fact that they associate it with quality, cost-effectiveness or any other characteristic that you want to be known for.

Principles of an effective logo
For you to successfully create a logo, there are some principles you need to be aware of. As a beginner in the world of logo design, you’ll need to train your mind so that it can adopt a creative thinking process that will enable you to come up with unique designs. You should be able to do this if you understand the following principles:

Simplicity is the key
Designers constantly overdo it when it comes to logos. But the most popular logos are striking in their simplicity. Nike and Apple are great examples: everyone on the planet recognizes these logos and their mottos. Obviously, there’s a thin line between overdoing and underdoing it, and this might be your biggest challenge when designing a logo.

It needs to be unique
In a sea of companies, the last thing you need is a generic logo design that looks like everyone else’s. Sure, there are some popular design features for any niche, but you need something with a unique style—features that people relate to your brand specifically.

It needs to be recognizable
You need to get inside the mind of your target audience, find out what they like and desire, and develop your design accordingly. The logo should stand out and be easy to recognize, even from a distance. Obviously, a lot of research needs to be done here but it will be worth your while.

Flexibility is very important
The logo should be recognizable regardless of size or the medium it is represented in. It needs to work both in color and black and white, on billboards and business cards, in a corner of a web page viewed from a smartphone, and on keychains and mugs. Logos that are overly complex don’t translate well into smaller formats.

It needs mirror a business’ personality
It’s possible to come up with a great logo that just lacks the right spirit. An excellent example would be to use playful colors and a cartoonish font when creating a logo for a serious law firm—that’s a big no-no. However, there are many different mistakes you can make in this process that are not as obvious, which is why it’s quite important for you to clearly define your business.

Different types of logos
Now that you’re familiar with the basic principles, it’s time to find out what types of logos there are, so you can become familiar with your options. Different types of logos can help you achieve maximal personalization and find just the right tone.

Text
A common mistake laymen make is thinking that a logo needs to consist only of design elements rather than plain text. This is far from the truth. It’s possible to create a timeless design by using a word, a single letter or an abbreviation. The beauty of this approach lies in different fonts and possibilities that are practically limitless.

Symbolic
Symbols are fun and memorable. A symbol can be anything from a small green leaf that signifies eco-consciousness to a specific animal, geometric shapes or even something completely abstract. Many symbols are recognizable worldwide, and while some of them incorporate other well-known symbols from the past, or were inspired by them, a lot of the best ones were created from scratch.

The obvious problem here is that you won’t be the first person to remember a certain connotation between a symbol and a particular business niche, and it’s very likely that you’ll end up with a concept that already exists if you don’t do your homework.

Combined
If you decide to combine symbols with text, you’ll have even more options for your design. There are many interesting examples of how powerful a combination of symbols and words can be in the world of logos. But there’s a problem you need to avoid. This type of logo can easily be overdone—with so many options, it can be difficult not to cross that thin line we mentioned earlier. Staying aware of our first principle—simplicity—will keep you on the right track.

The logo design process
Everything we’ve mentioned so far is a bit theoretical, but now it’s time to see the exact steps you need to go through before you can come up with a final version of your logo. A light bulb appearing above your head along with a brilliant idea in your mind the minute you start working on it is a possibility, but also highly unlikely. Any creative process needs to be divided into clear steps, so that you can be as efficient as possible.

Create a brief, or creative guidelines, to cover the end goals and problems that need to be addressed

Before you start working on the logo, you need to define what you are trying to convey, who your target audience is, what common problem you will be solving and what makes your brand different from the competition. You essentially want to clearly define your value proposition and crystalize your brand philosophy.

Here’s an efficient list of questions you should have in front of you during this process:

What are my goals?
Who I am trying to present via a logo?
Who is my target audience?
What makes me better than my competition?
What does my brand stand for?
Talk with your business associates and employees, or family members if you are starting a family business, and make sure you know how you want others to view your company.

In-depth research
The next step is to start looking at the market, other companies in your niche and even what consumers are saying on forums and social media. Your logo needs to be market appropriate, tailored to suit the preferences of your target audience and initiate an emotional response. Simultaneously, it must be consistent with your own brand values and the type of image you wish to portray. Creating an ideal customer avatar helps a lot during this stage.

Armed with insights from your research, you can begin to narrow your ideas down to the specific type of logo you think would work best, such as one of the three mentioned in the previous section. You can also start to think about the colors, fonts and symbols you can use, and the emotion you want to convey. It’s best to focus on one or two characteristics that you’d like showcase through your logo, such as “elegant and modern” or “young and adventurous.”

Finding inspiration and exploring different ideas
This is the point where you sit down with your business partners, friends or family members, make lots of coffee and start brainstorming. While you’re doing your homework, make sure that you expose your mind to different sources of inspiration — having a staring contest with a blank page in front of you can hardly do any good. You can look at pop culture, art, history, mythology, something from your past that has great emotional value, an inspirational quote from a book or movie, or create a play on words based on your company name. It will keep you motivated and focused throughout the whole process if you take several short breaks.

Creating several coherent digital draft versions
Once you have a good idea what you want to accomplish and have found several elements you wish to incorporate, you can begin to sketch out different ideas on paper. You don’t need great drawing skills for this process, just create rough images. There are three main options here: you can create rough freehand drawings to give a professional designer an idea of what you want, use computer software and online tools to put together a few drafts or just outsource the project completely, but more on that later.

Evaluating and tweaking the design
The primary concept you come up with should be treated as a tree that has just been planted—you need to give it space to breathe and grow. When you are designing your own logo, it’s best to share your ideas and rough sketches with friends and family, or even with potential customers on social media, and get some feedback.

Producing samples and selecting a design
When you have created several design options that work best, it’s time to crystalize them. At this point you can choose one or two designs that everyone likes, and create one or two variations, changing small things like font, color, proportions or the positioning of some of the elements. You also should test your concepts in black and white, and in color, and see if they work in a range of sizes. After this is done, it’s time to seek more feedback. When you’ve determined which of these variations seems to get the best response, it’s time to move on to the final phase.

Tools and methods for creating a logo
There are a lot of great user-friendly tools and cost-effective services you can use to create a logo, depending on your needs, budget and skill level. Even if you have no previous experience with logo design, you can create some rough drafts that will give a professional designer a good starting point. Here are the three most popular routes that you can take.

Be easy on yourself if you’re a beginner.There are many different websites that can help you come up with decent design quickly. Free tools can offer some decent variety and help you create a serviceable design, or just give you some good ideas that you can expand upon. Some sites offer pre-made designs that you can mix and match, customizing elements like size, font and color. Some designs offer even more freedom for customization. These don’t require much skill and are generally best for small companies with very tight budgets.

Free Tools
If you have time on your hands and want to create a logo by yourself, the next three tools will be very helpful. Each of them is a great tool that’s very efficient and most importantly—free to use.

Online Logo Maker
With over one million users, this software is capable of providing you with a first-hand experience in the world of logos. The huge collection of images from a lot of different categories make it simple to use and you can create your own logo within minutes. You should be aware that the interface of this tool is not that great, which is the only major disadvantage of Online Logo Maker. Nevertheless, you’ll be able to create good symbolic logos using this software.

Logaster 
Logoaster will enable you to browse through several hundreds of logos until you find the one perfect for you. After you enter your company name and select the type of business activity you do, you’ll be able to start your quest—once you select a logo, Logoaster will provide you with a variety of options, like adding text or changing colors, to customize and personalize it. The only thing left is to download it and you may do so in raster and vector formats, but first, you need to know the difference between the two formats.

Paid Services
For those who want a custom design based on their own ideas and research they’ve gathered, and are willing to pay a reasonable price for it, We the LassoART Designs will help you get the best logo which defines your brand on a very good price.
Visit www.lassoart.com
Contact Number +91-9098233796