

Business Logo Design
So you’ve decided to take the exciting step forward into the world of running your own company. Firstly, well done, you won’t regret it. But now comes the hard work, or does it…
Now you are running things, your to-do-list is probably as long as your arm, but have you thought about your business logo? You may be wondering how to design a logo for your business. Well, look no further!
In this article, we are going to do just that. We’ll explore the following topics and uncover the 7 easy steps to design a business logo:
- What is a logo?
- What are the different types of logos?
- 7 Easy steps to design a business logo
- Logo design software
- What makes a good logo?
- How much to design a logo?
What is a logo?
I think before we delve into the details, it’s probably best to start at the beginning to make sure we know exactly what a logo is and probably more importantly, what a logo is not.
What is a logo?
A logo is a visual brand mark used to identify a business. It’s usually made up of an icon or symbol combined with the name of the business in text form. A good logo should be easily identifiable, memorable and differentiate between you and your competition.
What a logo is not
Most importantly, your logo is not your brand and while we’re on the subject, your brand is not a logo.
It’s an important point that a lot of people don’t realise. Your logo is a bit like the face of your company, it’s how you recognise a business. Your brand is much more than this, it incorporates your message, your values and every experience your customer has with your business.
It’s important to remember this when creating your logo. Your logo doesn’t have to convey everything about your businesses. Keep it simple and concentrate on making it attractive, clear and something your customers will remember.


A selection of famous logos
What are the different types of logos?
Now we understand what a logo is, we need to be aware of the different types available to use. Some you may be familiar with more than others.
Although it comes down to personal preference when deciding which one you use for your business, it would be wrong to ignore the pattern used for each businesses type.
This is a great reason why you should use professional graphic designers to create your business logo.
The 4 most common types of logos are:
- Emblem
- Wordmark
- Mascot
- Combination
- Emblem Logo
- Wordmark Logo
- Mascot Logo
- Combination Logo
How to design a logo in 7 Easy Steps!
Now we come to the reason you are reading this article. Logo design is not something to be taken lightly. How your logo looks, reflects on your business, you’re not going to get the right result with a free logo maker!
That’s why we recommend you seek the services of professional graphic designers that have logo design portfolio examples within their portfolio.
However, this does not mean you can’t understand the process of logo design and look into ideas yourself, by following these 7 easy steps:
- Make a list of the keywords that define your company
- Sketch simple ideas based on these words. These could be icons or symbols.
- Choose and refine your idea
- Use graphic design software to develop your logo
- Choose your colour palette
- Pick your font family
- Think about growth, does it allow for a change (e.g additional branches, product ranges etc)
Logo design software
Every designer has their preference when it comes to logo design software. Luckily there are a handful of great programs, perfect for creating that winning design.
As we’re talking about professional logo design within this blog, I’m going to concentrate on the more common pieces of software used by agencies. However, just so you can explore them for yourself, below is a list of the best logo design software programs available:
So let’s have a look at the top two in this list, Illustrator and Photoshop, both from the well renowned American multinational computer software company, Adobe inc.
Adobe Illustrator
First up, probably the most well equipped, refined and widely used piece of software for creating logos.
This industry-leading vector graphics software gives you everything you need to create logos and icons, as well as full detailed illustrations and brochure layout capabilities.
With access to creative instruments such as the Pen tool, shape creator and perspective grids, your imagination is your limit!
It doesn’t stop with just the shape creation either, Illustrator is fully equipped to handle document layout, so paragraph and character formatting is readily available and easy to use.
Being primarily a vector-based program makes it perfect for logo design. When creating a logo, scalability is a major factor.
As a business owner, your logo will need to appear in many different places and in different sizes. It would be no good having to use a different logo for each scenario would it?
The version that appears small on your business cards needs to be exactly the same as the one that is 5ft wide outside on your building sign.
A Vector format such as a .eps (‘Encapsulated PostScript’) are made from lots of lines, curves (or paths) and coordinates that ‘make-up’ an image or shape. These points are relative to each other, therefore they can be scaled infinitely without losing quality. This makes them perfect when it comes to creating a logo for your company and is the reason why this is our first choice.
Adobe Photoshop
Where Illustrator is vector-based, Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor. What is this and why do I care, I hear you ask!
Unlike vector images, ‘Raster’ file types or ‘Bitmap’ images have a dot matrix data structure, which is usually made up of a grid of coloured dots known as pixels, dots or points. They are the preferred method when working with photographs.
If you remember we talked about the importance of scalability when designing a logo. As there are a set number of pixels (or dots per inch) within a photograph, if your image is 5cm x 5cm and 300dpi and you enlarge it to 500cm x 500cm, it will still only contain 300dpi.
So what will happen to the image quality?
Well, it becomes pixelated (blurred), which is more commonly referred to as low-resolution. The 300 pixels are stretched to fill a space 10x bigger than your original image.


Example of scaling a Vector image and a Raster image
So does this make Photoshop useless for creating logos? Well, No, not at all, but there are a few limitations you need to be aware of.
We’ve already mentioned the scalability issue, but how do you get around this? The honest answer is you can’t really. You would need to make the logo the required size of its intended use. Or ideally a lot larger so it can be scaled down.
We don’t use Photoshop for logos for this reason, but what Photoshop can do, is offer a range of filters and graphic styles that could be a real advantage to enhance your logo design.
We find Photoshop a great tool for creating part of the logo, but not all of it. Anything that needs to be very sharp and clear when scaled, we leave to Illustrator. But anything that needs a bit of magic, such as lens flare, zoom and warp effects we add in Photoshop, don t be afraid to try it.
It’s important to recognise the strengths and weaknesses of both programs and if required use a combination of both to make your logo.
What makes a good logo?


What makes a good logo
We think you can define a good logo by seeing how it scores in 6 categories:
Is it Unique?
Every business is different, even if you sell the same product or offer the same service. Your company will have certain values that make if different from your competitors. Your logo should be no different, it should reflect you and you alone.
Is it Simple?
A logo should be able to convey it’s message quickly and efficiently. If you have to look at the logo to work out what it’s trying to say, or finding the hidden meaning before you know what company it’s for, it’s too complicated!
Is it Timeless?
You want your business to be a long term investment. So it would be a shame if your logo went out of date after a couple of years. Ensuring it doesn’t follow short-term trends and is kept simple are just 2 ways your logo can last.
Is it Memorable?
A logo should not only be recognisable, it should be memorable. By making sure it connects with your customer emotionally, allows it to stay in their mind, ready for the next time they need it.
Is it Appropriate?
It can be the best-looking logo in the world, but if it’s not appropriate, I’m afraid it’s useless. Refer back to the brief at all times and don’t design for yourself, design for your customers.
Is it Scaleable?
What happens if you branch out into different services or products. Can your logo move forward with your business? The use of colour can be an easy way to introduce a sub-brand.
How much to design a logo?
Now to the million-pound question – how much to design a logo? Deep down I think you know how I’m going to answer that question.
As you can see from reading this post, there are many factors that need to be taken into account when understanding how to design a logo.
Each of these details can make it either a simple process or a complex one. If you require an Emblem logo, created in vector format with intricate details, you can look to pay upward of £300.
On the other hand, if you require a Wordmark and you know the font and colour you want to use, depending on the design company, you may hope to spend between £100 and £200 for your finished logo.
The work that goes into designing a logo is extensive and as a customer, you only see the finished result. I guess it’s a bit like the iceberg analogy.


Logo Process from a customers point of view
Conclusion
What have we learnt about how to design a logo for your business?
We should now be able to answer the question, ‘what is a logo?‘ and know what a logo is not. Ideally, we need our logo to be simple, attractive, clear and something your customers will remember when they need your service or product again.
Along with the different types of logos, we have an understanding of the main graphic design software suitable for logo creation. This also gave us an insight into the different file formats we can work with and the advantages they can give us.
Finally, as well as an estimated price range for how much to design a logo, we have 7 easy steps to follow to ensure our creating is suitable for our business needs.
Based in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, our logo designers provide a full range of graphic design services to clients across Cumbria and the UK.
Contact us to find out how we could help your business grow. Call Pair Creative on 01229 840248 or email hello@paircreative.com