Logos of any kind are important pieces of branding. But corporate logos carry the weight of a large company, which means they’ll be more fully utilized, more commonly seen, and more closely scrutinized for effectiveness.

Your corporate logo will either enhance your brand identity or detract from it.

How can you make sure that the logo will boost your company brand image? Let’s look at four ways to make your corporate logo design memorable and practical.

Highlight brand identity

Whether your business is large or small, identifying your brand personality is an important part of strategizing everything from packaging to marketing to outreach. That brand identity is what allows you to effectively reach out to your target audience.

Keeping that in mind, highlighting your brand identity within your logo design is a great way to harmonize your branding with your brand itself.

Of course, this means that different companies need different types of logo design. Let’s say you have a large tech-based corporation and want to project an image of trustworthiness, cutting-edge technology, and reliability. What type of corporate logo do you think would accurately reflect those key aspects?

• A hand-drawn logo with a quirky, amateur feel
• A generic logo that blends in with the competition
• A unique logo that projects innovativeness and professionalism

On the other hand, other companies are founded on different personality traits. Your company may need to project approachability, demonstrate a sense of humor, or show that it is family-oriented. A quirky, mascot-based logo may be the best option for you. In other cases, hand-drawn and “homemade”-feeling logos are the most accurate reflection of the brand personality.

An important first step is to recognize the brand personality that you’re working with. Remember that the style of logo that you choose can heavily impact its effectiveness, depending on your business. A great way to ensure that you follow through on your brand identity in your branding is to have it all laid out on paper. Create a manifesto about your brand, describing what it would be like if it were a person, including traits, goals, and values. Then, as you create individual pieces of branding, ensure that they harmonize with that personality.

Utilize color psychology in your logo design

The psychology of color is another vital component of branding. But the tricky part is that we don’t all perceive color the same way, as has been demonstrated by “preferred color” surveys. Men may be more inclined to prefer blues, while women may be more drawn towards reds and greens. Color perception differs across ages, backgrounds, genders, nationalities, cultures, and even individual markets.

So it’s very important to know who your target audience is before you put your color palette in place.

In addition to that factor, it’s also vital to conduct market research and determine what color trends there are within your market, why certain colors are more popular than others, and what message they send. If that message coincides with your brand identity, then you should definitely consider using those trending colors — but there’s a caveat to that. As mentioned in the previous subheading, corporate logos need to guard against appearing too generic or looking too much like the competition. So don’t just jump on a bandwagon without maintaining uniqueness and clear messaging.

Choose dynamic typography based on your logo style

Corporate logos often fall under one of the typography-based logo styles, such as wordmark, lettermark, monogram, or combination mark.

• Wordmark logos use the name of the brand as the logo itself.
• Lettermark logos use a single letter, such as the initial letter of the brand name.
• Monograms use all initial letters in a multi-word name.
• Combination marks use letters or words in combination with a graphic.

Again, one of the main traits that should commonly be associated with a corporation is power. Due to this, consider a heavier font for your logo. You may also want to use one that includes serifs, as these tend to look more polished and professional.

Whichever type of logo you choose in your design, if the typographic content is the focus, it’s even more important that you make sure it is legible and easy to read. This will likely require some trial runs of different fonts, adjustments in kerning and spacing, and getting feedback on the user friendliness of the logo.

Keep in mind, also, that typography also has a psychology behind it, just like the psychology of color. Your choice of font sends a message about the brand, and certain fonts are perceived as inherently having certain “personality” traits. So sticking to a font that promotes the same message and values as your brand does is a great way to ensure that there is continuity and harmony between your branding and your corporation.

Ensure adaptability

Our final key to creating a stunning corporate logo centers on ensuring the adaptability of the logo. This little piece of branding is small but mighty — it’s going to go a lot of places and be seen by a lot of people. 

You might include your logo on corporate letterheads, on your website, on product packaging, in advertisements, in marketing and promotional material, on business cards, on pens, coffee cups, billboards, t-shirts… the possibilities are endless for a great logo.

With all of those possibilities, though, it’s clear that adaptability needs to be at the forefront of your design.

Expert designers recommend that you have at least a few different variations of your logo in your design stable. 

• A black and white version
• A single color-pop version
• A simplified version
• Horizontal
• Vertical
• If you use a combination mark, you’ll want to have one with and one without both elements

On top of that, make sure that your logo handles both stretching and compression well. Scalability is one of the qualities that should be emphasized during the design process.

A great corporate logo isn’t always easy to attain. Many designers leave some of the above considerations out of the process. But if you make sure to give due attention to each of the four points mentioned here, your corporate logo can come to life, and give your company effective representation.

Author Bio

Alice Scott is a passionate writer and blogger who specializes in topics related to digital branding, blogging, and online business. She loves having Churros with her cat Chubby and morning walks.

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