To circle or not to circle? that is not the only question.

Logo design faux pas are more common than you might think, and amateur designers seem to slip up in the same areas over and over again. Whether it be in the colour palette, fonts, or the shape of the overall design, logos are often overcomplicated to compensate for a lack of knowledge on what makes an intriguing image. This has the counterproductive effect of confusing and even repelling potential clients. So, what could be done differently to make your logo design more captivating?

Sometimes, it’s best just to ask an expert.

Chris Wilton is a Cape Town-based designer with extensive experience in the niche of logo design. We asked him a few questions about his design process and got some intriguing answers. This was the story he gave us:

Know your Message

“I generally just start with research to find inspiration that links to the brand’s history and what they’re all about, and then kind of put together a mood board of all the ideas that come to mind.” – C.W.

Chris Wilton says it’s a great starting point to consider what kind of imagery is relevant to your brand representation and then think about the greater connotations these visuals could have in relation to the world as a whole. If you’re designing a logo for your start-up company, ensuring that you have a clear vision and direction for your brand would therefore be a prerequisite in creating a truly effective design. So, know your intentions and wear your mission statement on your sleeve!

For ideas on how to create a mood board of your own, check out this article and get started planning your logo design.

You’d Better Shape Up

“A huge part of logo design, before we make anything digital, is to work on the actual shape in pencil. So that’s just sketching it out, and it doesn’t have to be perfect. When you’re working on lots and lots of iterations, you can develop the shape a lot more easily on paper.” – C.W.

When we asked Wilton how he gets started on his designs, he responded by saying that the advice he was given by his creative director was to focus on getting the shape right before anything else. With this particular design element, there are many different silhouettes and styles to consider, all of which create particular moods – more on this next.

“This is the primary thing that people are going to remember. When it comes to actually design a logo, we don’t consider colour at all at first. It’s mostly just about the shape and what it looks like in black and white.” – C.W.

Traditional vs. Trendy

“In traditional logo design, designers would use a lot more organic shapes like things that would appear in nature. Whereas today, it has definitely shifted to more geometric, simplistic 2D shapes. Something that’s simple and comes to mind easily when you see it in the blink of an eye.” – C.W.

These kinds of modern 2D designs certainly lend themselves to being a more adaptable symbol, which can be scaled up or down for different marketing mediums. That being said, trends do tend to expire quite quickly. Whether you opt for an organic, flowy look or a simple geometric design, a good piece of advice is to find ways to make your logo simultaneously original and timeless.

Something to consider when choosing between tradition and modernity:

Apple and Playboy have both taken nature-based themes and turned them simple, edgy, and geometric, and these designs are iconic. Soundcloud chose the stylised image of a cloud combined with simple lines symbolising soundwaves, and this plays poetically into both the name and the purpose of the platform itself.

Just because you’re working with a natural, seemingly more organic concept doesn’t necessarily mean that traditional designs are your only option. Think outside of the box!

If you’re torn between an edgy geometric design and a flowy organic one, click here for help narrowing it down.

Scale Back! Bigger isn’t always better.

“Consider where the client wants their logo to appear. So, what’s the main point of contact between the brand and its customers. Does it appear on an app icon, or on packaging for a product, or just in a social media profile picture? These are important things to think about when it comes to planning the shape of the logo” – C.W.

The purpose and intended scale of the logo will determine how simple or intricate the design elements can be. But for the most part, Wilton says, it isn’t a case of ‘go big or go home’. It’s more a case of keeping it simple. If you want your logo to be adaptable to many different contexts and scales, a well-spaced, minimalistic design can help you avoid one heck of a headache. If your design elements are over-scaled and crowded, your logo won’t be as clear or memorable.

Subsequently, something to be conscious of when creating an effective design is the size, spacing and simplicity of your fonts. Wilton says there are certain design rules to keep in mind, like ensuring a sufficient amount of space between letters and between lines of words. It’s important to make sure your font can actually be read with ease.

“We rarely use cursive in logos, script fonts will only really be used for thank-you cards, or maybe certificates if it’s a really personal brand. They just don’t lend themselves to as much legibility.” – C.W.

Refine your Design

“Once you take your ideas from paper into a digital space, then you can start playing around with where the colour works and how it might interact with the font. Things like how the font can maybe be placed in or around the shape.” – C.W.

This is the time to re-examine your mood board and narrow your ideas down further. Choosing a colour palette is easier when you’ve carefully selected a few tasteful ideas, rather than a million different concepts you’d like to squish into one. Think about the atmosphere conveyed by different colours, and whether or not you’d like a warm or cool aesthetic. Are you going for a fierce and fiery look, or something calm and collected? Perhaps something sleek and luxurious? Check out this article on colour in logo design for more inspiration.

Wilton’s advice is that whatever you decide, it’s best not to overdo it. Generally, for his primary colour palettes, he likes to use three to five colours with some colours being the same hue but different shades. Just to keep things crisp and classy. “But really,” he says, “there is no right or wrong way to do it. It just depends on the brand and what they want to convey.”

A picture is worth a thousand words, and if you know what your company has set out to say, it shouldn’t take too much visual noise to make your point – so why overcomplicate it? Draw your audience in with style and simplicity, and don’t try too hard. Being tactful and resist the urge to overcrowd your logo leaves space for a sense of harmony and coherence, the kind of aesthetic that draws potential clients in. The time for simply putting things in circles and calling it a day has been and gone. Creating a logo is a craft, like writing a book. And as with writing a book, you can have a plethora of brilliant ideas, but if you use them all at once, you might not get anything across at all.

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