The first thing that customers or leads notice is your logo. People see thousands of logos a day. Yours needs to make an impression and logo mistakes affect that.
Whether you’re rebranding or starting a new company, making a logo choice is incredibly important and it can be stressful.
If you don’t get your logo to stand out, you may be a great business but customers may not remember you.
It’s tough for someone to remember a poor brand and logo and it will affect business. You need to make a real impact on the consumer’s mind.
Here are the top 10 mistakes to avoid when designing a logo.
Using Too Many Fonts
If the fonts are too much alike, they won’t stand out from each other. When someone views a logo, they automatically see the most important elements to the least important.
Designers use this hierarchy to pull attention to the most important elements of a logo while downplaying secondary parts.
It’s not visually appealing if there are a lot of fonts vying for attention. The eyes won’t know where to go.
The best practice is to use contrast. Pick one font to highlight important words. Then choose just one other secondary font.
If you keep it simple with just two, you’ll create the proper hierarchy.
Not Using Color Psychology
Think of this when you chose your colors. Colors can influence moods.
Here’s an example. Bright yellow, red and orange make consumers hungry. That’s why Mcdonalds, Wendys and Pizza Hut use those color schemes.
Do a bit of research with your brand’s objectives and values in mind. Pantone is a great resource for this.
Using Only Soft Colors
There are industries where this works. Like wedding planning, like baby clothes and so on.
However, most logos that only use these are tough to read or see. Often from a distance, people can’t see your name.
Some of the best logos have colors of all values. Light, mid and dark tones get this done. It makes your brand more versatile and makes the logo easy to read.
Not Considering How It Converts To Print
Most owners just look at how it looks on a screen and social media. Yes, it should be bold and jump out there, but it needs to do the same while printed on stickers, business cards, signs, and brochures.
The colors used for web design often differ from print design. Web uses the RGB (red, blue and green) principle while print uses CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Key Black).
Most graphic design programs give you the option of working with either one. Test each out and possibly make a version of each scheme.
Looking Like Your Competitors
This is one of the most common logo mistakes. A lot of business owners see successful competitors and take ideas from them.
The better practice is to go the opposite way of your rivals. Just like Pepsi is blue to Coke’s red.
You want to make your own impact on a consumer’s mind. Not piggyback off another logo.
Communicating Too Much With The Logo
Just like too many fonts will mess up the message’s goal, too many words or images do the same.
Keep it simple. Companies that try to say too much with their logo end up saying nothing at all.
You need a strong message that stands for something, but just one. You want consumers to quickly identify what you do.
Not Being Flexible
Your logo needs to be able to be in different sizes and variations. The top of your website should be a different variation than your favicon or profile photos.
If it isn’t versatile, it won’t work on all the different spaces you need it too. Create your logo with variations in mind.
When you are making it, make three or four versions that will fit on different platforms.
Not Wanting To Do A Redesign
Logos won’t usually last forever. Even the biggest brands change theirs from time to time.
Certain times signal a need for a redesign. Like if you want to target a new audience of if you want to get rid of your old reputation, or even if you have a new company mission.
It doesn’t need to be a full change. It can be just a slight refining of a few colors, fonts or other aspects.