It takes less than 50 milliseconds for people to form an opinion about your website.
This means you have less than a second to make a good first impression. If you want people to be interested in your site you have to use things like color, design, and especially logos to hold their attention.
But good graphic design work doesn’t come cheap. And if your site is small, chances are you don’t have the resources to hire a marketing department and graphics teams.
No worries though, we’ve compiled some tips to help you create effective logos that’ll help your clients remember your brand.
1. Choose Colors That Represent Your Brand
The colors you choose will make or break your logo. That makes it important to pick colors that fit the product or service your website provides.
For example, colors like yellow and red are bright and bold so they are commonly used for fast food restaurants. A color like blue is professional and calming, and it is typically used in medical industries.
If you’re working with more than one color, then you should make sure that your color palette is harmonious.
You can do this by using either analogous colors that are close to each other on the color wheel and similar in hue and tone. These color pallets make your product look unified and balanced.
Alternatively, you can use complementary, which are on opposite ends of the color wheel. Because of their contrasting nature, these colors pallets often make a bold statement.
It’s a good idea to pick a color pallet the fits the color scheme of your website.
2. Keep It Simple
Think about the best brand logos. From the Nike check mark to the McDonald’s golden arches, they all have one thing in common. They keep their design simple, and that’s what makes them great.
The most effective logos don’t add any unnecessary visual details and confine their design to a few simple shapes and colors.
Some good rules to keep in mind are that your logo should use no more than 3 main colors and should have at most 2 dominant shapes. The simpler your logo is the more flexible it is and the easier it is to transfer to different locations and sizes.
As a small site, this is your chance to shine. By making a simple logo you can add it as an accent to small sites. This is an advantage because a simple logo may get lost on a big site. But on a simpler website, it’s more likely to stand out.
3. The Font Is Everything
There are tons of different ways to create effective logos you can use a simple shape or bright colors. No matter what method you use, you’re going to have to your companies name somewhere. And to make it memorable, you’re going to need the perfect font.
Let’s go over the different types of fonts you can use to communicate your brand’s message.
Serif fonts usually have lines or accents on the tips of each letter.
They are traditional and work well in formal situations as well as giving your company a feeling of history and heritage. They make your company look established, so these fonts work well for companies that are looking to build brand awareness.
Some good serif fonts to experiment with when designing a logo are Times New Roman, Garamond, and Georgia.
Sans serif fonts tend not to have accents on the ends of each letter. This gives them a sleek modern look. They are simple and help stick in the viewer’s mind when looking at your logo.
Some good examples of san serif fonts are Century Gothic and Avant-Garde.
The font you choose for your logo should fit the overall design for your site. For example, if your web pages use only sans serif fonts, having a serif logo may make change the overall feeling of the site.
4. Make It Meaningful
The logo you design should be immediately recognizable because it means something specific to your company.
Pick symbols that have specific meaning to your company and that represent the values that your brand has.
The easiest way to do this is to brainstorm important elements of your company and use these ideas in your design process.
If you have a smaller website, then users will focus more on details on the site so all of them must be carefully chosen especially logos.
5. Use Shape to Your Advantage
Knowing how to use shapes is one of the basics logo design principles.
Ovals and circles often represent harmony and positivity. Because they have no beginning or end, they often represent unity.
The meaning of triangles tends to vary based on whether the sides are equal or not and if they are unbalanced or resting on their base. Triangles tend to provoke feelings of action and aggression.
Squares suggest stability. In fact, rectangles are the most popular shape used in logo design. If you want your brand to represent honesty and security you might want to use squares in your design.
Squares and rectangles also have a mathematical rational feeling because of their use of straight lines and right-angles.
Make sure the shapes you choose fit the overall design of your site. If you have a simple site that uses a lot of square shapes you might want to create a logo based around squares and rectangles.
Alternatively, you can choose a shape design that contrasts with your site to draw attention to your companies logo.
6. Avoid Chasing Trends
The most important factor in effective logo design is making it memorable and unique. The timeless nature of designs like Coca-Cola and GE shows the importance of logos.
A good logo should be based on a solid understanding of logo design basics and not the style of other designers.
When your site is small, you need to remember that certain design trends that may fit larger flashy sites might not look good on smaller sites.
Some trends you might want to avoid are overused fonts like Helvetica and cliched design accents like overlapping letters, random colored dot, and arches over the tops of words.
7. Make Sure It’s Flexible
As your business grows, so will your site. You’ll need a logo that you can be used over and over again while still representing your brand. Remember effective logos need to be readable at any size.
A good rule of thumb for logo design is that your design needs to look good weather its the size of a billboard or the size of a stamp.
Your logo should be versatile enough to fit on every page of your site. This is even more important if you have a small website because your users may spend less time on the site. This means you need to make an impact with your logo.
One of the best ways to do this is design small so that it will look better once you make it bigger.
Need More Help Making Effective Logos?
Effective logos can mean the difference between your brand being recognized and your brand being forgotten. But there’s more to successful branding then creating a great logo.
If you want to learn how to successfully market your website contact us and we can help your site grow.
