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Do you want your logo to be recognized even by a 5-year-old child?
Of course, yes! Then you need to work hard.
The logo is the face of the company. Effective logo design is not just a set of successful graphic solutions. There is a lot of preliminary work behind it. You have to think about the brand’s mission and analyze the composition of the target audience.
Already have a logo that blends into the crowd? This guide shows you how to make your logo stand out by improving the one you have, not starting over. I’ve used these techniques to rework logos on my own sites, and most of them take an afternoon, not a full rebrand.
We have used the word effective for the logo. But what is behind this word? To answer this question, you need to understand why they are created.
Table of Contents
Why Are Logos Important?
The logo helps the consumer identify the product. It makes the brand instantly recognizable. If companies were not engaged in the creation of the logo and corporate identity, we would have to study the content of the labels to find out the manufacturer. Luckily for brands, they can get help from designers and stand out from the competition.
Branding turns a purchase into an emotional decision. You create images that are broadcast to people during an advertising campaign, and the logo, as a trigger, launches them at the right time. When we see an image of an apple in a storefront or on a device, we recognize Apple. The visuals are combined with the advertising message. Looking at the Apple logo, we subconsciously understand: this is quality, style, and status.
How to Make Your Logo Stand Out: Before vs After Checklist
Run your current logo against this checklist. Every item in the left column is a quick fix, and the sections below show you how.
| Weak logo | Strong logo |
|---|---|
| Looks generic | Recognizable silhouette |
| Thin strokes | Clear at small sizes |
| Too many colors | One dominant color |
| Trendy | Timeless |
If you ticked two or more boxes on the left, your logo isn’t broken. It just needs sharpening.
How to Make an Effective Logo for Your Business?
Research First
Obviously, you do not want to design a logo the same as your competitors, particularly those in the same industry or local to you. To be a recognizable brand, the first thing is that your objective behind creating a logo needs to be original.
Indeed, it is good to get inspired by others, but it is better to make something that appeals to the audience more. However, if trade marketing is your purpose behind making a logo, then there is a need to differentiate yourself visually. Only then can you achieve the level of status you are deemed to have.
Before you change anything, answer three questions in one line each: What does the business do? Who is it for? What three words should people feel when they see the logo? Then compare your current logo to those answers. In my experience, most weak logos aren’t badly drawn. They’re just saying the wrong thing, like a playful rounded font on a brand that sells trust.
Color will Make You More Visible.
You should take a good look at your competitors. This will help you understand what colors and fonts are used in the niche. Color has the responsibility to make the brand stand out. With a suitable color scheme that your competitors have not used, you can attract visitors to your business.
Researching your competitors will also help you decide on a typeface. Pick a font that is not boring and allows your brand to stay ahead of your rivals. Ensure that the font you have chosen is appropriate and has the correct style for your business. It is advisable not to pick absurd combinations to remain unique.
Keep it to one dominant color, with one supporting shade at most. In the Branded in Memory experiment by Signs.com, about 80% of people got brand colors right even when their drawings of the logos were way off. Color is the part of your logo people actually keep, so record the exact HEX, RGB, and CMYK values and use them everywhere.
Study your Competitors
While evaluating a logo, the first question to ask is, “What does a competitor’s logo look like?” It takes a lot of time and effort to develop a logo, and every competitor that has been on the market for a long time has already gone through this test.
Is there some common color? Is anyone using a similar font? Do all logos follow one general idea, and if so, what is it? Companies spend tens of thousands of dollars on these logos, and sometimes they don’t look good enough to reflect the essence and theme of the business.
Always check with your competitors’ branding; their mistakes will help you create a more accurate and attractive logo and save you some money.
A quick way to do this: screenshot 10 to 15 logos from your niche and put them side by side. If every fintech logo is blue with an upward arrow, another blue arrow makes you invisible. Change one big variable (color, shape, or logo type), and you instantly look different. While you’re at it, search the WIPO Global Brand Database for registered marks in your category, so your fresh idea doesn’t turn out to be someone else’s trademark.
Consider Using a Unique Handwritten Font
For more than a century, the Coca-Cola Company has made only a few minor changes to its iconic logo, proving that a handwritten typeface can stand the test of time.
Sometimes none of the standard fonts work, and the handwritten font looks perfect. The most striking example of such a visual identity, which has gradually changed over a century, is the Coca-Cola logo.
Unlike its eternal rival Pepsi, which has seriously revised its visual identity at least 7 times, the Coca-Cola Company has hardly changed its logo since the end of the century before last. If Coca-Cola ditched its signature typeface in favor of an austere sans-serif typeface (as Pepsi did in the 1960s), there would be a storm of indignation. By choosing a truly unique, personalized handwritten font, you will create a strong, recognizable brand that will remain relevant for years to come.
Work with the Coordinate System and Structure
It is not uncommon for designers to draw the audience’s attention to certain details of the geometric structure of the logo. A great example of this is the recent rebranding of Deliveroo, brought to life by the professionals at DesignStudio.
More and more design studios are putting their portfolios on display. Their best work can be seen on online platforms like Behance and Dribbble, on their own websites, or in thematic publications.
The new Twitter icon is built around a set of intersecting circles, which, according to this drawing, corresponds to 1: 1.618 (the so-called “golden ratio”). You can often see a description of the technical side of the logo composition. In other words, we consider the coordinate system in which the emblem is built, its individual bends and corners. It is a valuable resource for understanding how to use theoretical design principles (such as the golden ratio) in practice.
To check the structure of your own logo, look at four things:
- Alignment: Does the icon line up with the text baseline or cap height?
- Stroke weight: Are the lines in the icon and letters roughly the same thickness?
- Proportion: Is the icon fighting the wordmark for attention? One should lead.
- Spacing: Is the gap between icon and text consistent across versions?
Small fixes here often do more than a full redesign. I noticed that just aligning an icon to the cap height made one of my logos look noticeably more professional.
Engage Negative Space
Even the most primitive use of negative space can have amazing effects. For example, on the NBC emblem, with just one stroke, six multicolored drops turn into a peacock.
One of the best examples of using negative space in an all-text logo is the FedEx logo we mentioned earlier. However, there is also ample evidence among graphic logos that, if handled correctly, negative space can dramatically transform your logo. Moreover, the skillful use of negative space can add additional meaning to the logo, proving once again that the simpler the logo, the easier it is to remember.
Look at your current mark and ask where the gaps are. Could a letter’s counter become a symbol? Could two shapes share an edge? But don’t force it. A clunky hidden trick is worse than a clean logo with no trick at all. For more on stripping a mark back, see our guide to minimalism in logo design.
Don’t Forget the Black and White Palette
Designed by Italian graphic designer Francesco Saroglia, the Woolmark logo represents a triumph of monochrome design and is widely regarded as one of the finest emblems of all time.
With much talk about color, it’s easy to forget that the most popular logos are actually monochrome. They successfully play on the powerful contrast contained in this palette. But even if your logo is colorful, you need to make sure it looks good in black and white too.
If the colors in your logo serve to convey certain meanings, consider how you can convey those meanings in a black-and-white logo. Sometimes this requires changing the contrast of the elements so that they continue to express meaning even in solid color reproduction.
The easiest way to test this is to strip every color out and look at your logo in pure black on white, then pure white on black. When I tested my own marks this way, gradients and subtle color splits were the first things to turn into mush. Build the black and white version first, then add color back.
Bring the Logo to Life
A static logo attached to a website page or in the corner of an envelope is often not enough. Think about bringing the logo to life. After all, virtual reality is rapidly changing the world we are used to, and new technical solutions are becoming more and more accessible.
In recent years, a professional logo design company can be hired to make logos more dynamic and add an element of unpredictability to them. Of course, this is not always possible, but in any case, you should remain open to new technologies.
Test Your Logo in 30 Seconds
This is the quick check I run after every change:
- Blur your screen slightly. Squint or zoom out until the details disappear. Can you still tell what it is?
- Shrink it to 32×32. That’s roughly browser-tab size. Thin strokes and small text usually vanish first.
- View it in a circle crop. Most social platforms crop profile pictures into circles, and square logos lose their corners.
- Ask someone to describe it after three seconds. Show it, hide it, and ask what they saw. If they can’t describe the shape, it isn’t standing out yet.
If your logo fails one of these, go back to the structure, negative space, and black and white sections above. For more traps to watch for, read our breakdown of common logo design mistakes.
Ready to Build a Logo From Scratch?
Ready to build a logo from scratch? Read our complete How to Make a Logo Design guide.
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