At some point in your entrepenuerial life you may find the need to establish your own business, or create a stronger brand for your existing business. Either way after you’ve effectively modeled / planned your business you will need to think of your identity (your brand). These tips will help you find more clarity on what your logo will convey to your consumer:

1. It’s not what you want, it’s what we want

By we I am speaking for your consumer. Some people feel defeated by this notion; thinking, “I began with my idea, why shouldn’t my logo rely on this principle?”. You don’t have to abandon everything you had in mind, but a good logo is subjective of your consumer. The first place to start thinking is in your consumer’s shoes, in reference to the product or service you provide. Is it going to be a technical user, or a middle-aged housewife? What would you like me to feel when I see your brand in an advertisement/on your website/ on your letterhead and business card?

2. Keep it simple and consistent

Your logo sets the mood for your buyers reaction to your product/service. If you want to be loud, keep it loud; If you want to be calm, keep it calm; You get the idea, what I imply is that just as someone rapidly changing tone and pace in a conversation would cause skepticism, so will deviation in your message. For most business’ you will want to keep the logo form simple and consistent. Better your salespeople compensate with more enthusiasm for a calm identity tone, as opposed to having to calm your customers down from your explosive identity tone. Color, shape, form, placement and proportion will all play a part in your consumer’s reaction to your logo.

• Simple in color is keeping your palette limited to using 2 or 3 colors in your logo
• Simple in shape is to keep shapes in your logo organic
• Simple in placement is keeping comfortable spacing between different elements of the logo
• Simple in proportion is to keep all proportions of elements in your logo as natural as possible
• Simple in form means keeping the logo natural relative to the image you intend to convey to your consumer.

3. The big picture is worth a million words

We’ve all heard the saying regarding a picture being worth a thousand words, well the big picture is worth a million. Understanding your consumer and understanding where you intend to go as a business are two realistic considerations you should be making now in order to think in the big picture. Furthermore, you should be meshing the ideas you started with and the most accurate representation of what your consumer anticipates to create a ‘best of both worlds’ logo design. Having trouble? It’s a great idea to scour the internet on blogs and websites to discover something that you can draw creativity/motivation from. Once you have a clear vision you can then begin to present your ideas to a designer in a way that makes sense to both you and your consumer base. The idea here is not to have a finished concept, but a clear idea of the elements involved.