by Dena Enos, Vice President of Marketing for LogoMix
With so much of our professional and personal lives playing out online, it’s critical for any business to have a strong presence in both spheres to thrive and grow. Even if your business is primarily offline, new potential customers are increasingly relying on online channels, such as search and social media, to research and inform their purchasing decisions.
It’s no wonder that our own customers told us that “website” was the #1 intended purpose for their shiny new logo design. Whether you just launched a new website, or are looking to give your online presence a more professional look, here are our top 4 tips for designing a logo that looks great online, no matter what the platform:
1. Keep it Simple.
For many of us, our business is. Keep your logo design simple, as it offers you more versatility and flexibility as your business matures and grow. Particularly online, you want the content of your website, not the logo, to be the focus. When a logo design is overly complex or detailed, it can be challenging to either build a complete website design around it, or make it work with an existing user experience. Instead, do yourself a favour and go with a simpler, more timeless logo design that can be more easily adapted into what you already have. Additionally, this simple design can grow with your business, as you make tweaks and adjustments to the website, or perhaps undergo a complete website redesign.
What’s more is that a simple design can more easily be branded offline – think storefront signs or banners, custom t-shirts with your logo on them, or your logo on a custom mug. It’s easier to control the quality and the cost when you have a simple design being printed, imprinted or embroidered.
2. Keep it Relevant.
If simplicity is Queen, then relevancy is the Prime Minister. You want your logo to give your potential customers an instant idea of what your business does and the mission behind what you do. This is especially helpful if a potential customer arrives at your website sideways through an organic search, and is looking for context when they land on your page for the first time. While your logo shouldn’t be a literal representation of your business, it should be descriptive and topical. While it’s tempting to go more iconic with a logo and rely on accompanying text to describe your business, it’s a risky move. You are heavily relying on the potential customers reading an extra line of text to understand your business purpose. When it works though, it really works (Twitter, we are talking about you).
3. Size Matters.
Before you finalize a logo design and start putting it up on every online channel that matters (more on this to come), you’ll want to consider two very important factors. First, how does this logo look when the size is dramatically adjusted – that is, shrunk or expanded? For example, if you scale the size of your logo down, for a favicon or to create an app icon that will stand out both on someone’s mobile screen and on the digital shelves of the Droid and Apple app stores, you want to be sure that it will still be legible and clear.
A different problem can arise when blowing your logo up to make a large sign or banner for that upcoming trade show. If a generic file type is used, such as a .png or .jpg, images can become blurry and pixelated when enlarged. The banner is not worth ordering if your logo looks unrecognizable in it. Building off this advice, the second important factor to consider is the right file types. You’ll need vector files of your design to ensure that the quality of your logo won’t be compromised if you adjust the size. Whether you are working with a graphic designer, a branding agency, or a free logo maker to create your logo, make sure that vector files are part of the deliverables that you receive with the finished product. These file types will give you the optimal flexibility as your business grows.
4. Don’t Forget Your Social Channels.
Just as critical as your own website, social media channels have become the preferred modes of communication and for finding new information for most savvy consumers. This includes Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest and LinkedIn, to name a few. Depending on your business type and the profile of your customers, some of these channels may be more relevant for your business than others. In the food or beverage industry? Pinterest and Instagram are no-brainers to showcase how-tos, finished recipes, and new menu items. Run a spa, salon or work in the beauty business? YouTube is a popular and authoritative source to share and find beauty tips and advice. For many of these channels, building your brand may require two additional images: a 160 x 160 for your profile photo, and a 851 x 315 for the cover image, a much larger image that can be changed as often as you’d like.
To make the most of this extra brand space, you can feature a new product or a limited time offer for new customers as the primary message and include your logo as a secondary message to reinforce your brand and create a sense of credibility. Don’t make both images logo-heavy, as this can be repetitive and impersonal.
Dena Enos is Vice President of Marketing for LogoMix, a self-service branding and marketing platform for growing businesses, featuring the easiest and most powerful logo maker online. She has scaled global teams in customer acquisition, CRM, brand marketing, public relations and social media. She draws on more than ten years of senior leadership experience, from bootstrapped startups to publicly traded companies. Follow her on Twitter.
