Logos are an incredibly important aspect of business branding, bringing your company to the attention of potential customers and putting across your identity and ethos efficiently.

Trends and styles change over time, so it’s also necessary for logos to keep up with modern design principles, so let’s look at the main rules that should guide you when creating a logo to represent your business.

Uniqueness

Your logo needs to stand out from the crowd, or else your brand might be mistaken for that of a rival, and you could even land yourself in legal hot water if you infringe on a trademark belonging to another organization.

Of course, achieving uniqueness without straying too far from design norms is difficult, which is why it pays to seek branding inspiration from graphic design services if you do not have the in-house talent to tackle logo creation in full.

Legibility

Another temptation to avoid is that of overegging the complexity of the design, at the expense of it being possible for customers to take in at a glance.

While a florid logo might be eye-catching, simplicity has proven itself a more powerful option in modern design, hence why all of the biggest brands around choose this route.

Flexibility

Your logo will need to work in a whole host of contexts, not just one, as it could end up appearing on everything from product packaging and signage to branded merch and of course online.

This mainly means thinking about how it appears when the background on which it is placed changes. If a logo works across different colors, and even across images, then it will have passed the test.

The same goes for its scalability, as you don’t want to be stuck with a logo that only looks good when blown up large, while being difficult to interpret when shrunk down.

Harmony

A typical logo will want to be well balanced in terms of the amount of space each element takes up. So in the case that it includes graphic design and your business name, you don’t want either aspect to dominate at the expense of the other.

Symmetry can also be considered in this scenario; while asymmetrical logos can work, they need to be handled carefully to avoid an imbalance of the elements, and a symmetrical setup may be more suitable and simple for you.

Durability

When we talk about durability in relation to logos, we’re thinking specifically about how long they will last. And a mistake many make in this regard is to use a logo that is too tied into era-specific trends, which will cause it to age far quicker than would otherwise be the case.

While there is no harm in taking cues from up to the minute stylistic movements, it’s still better to aim for a logo that will last for as long as possible without feeling anachronistic once fashions have moved on.

Suitability

Every logo should do its best to not only put across the identity of the brand, but also to represent the business and the industry it occupies.

If customers can see a clear link between the logo and the organization’s operations, it will be far more memorable. If, on the other hand, a logo seems to have been created in a vacuum without a thought about what the business does, then this disconnect might feel jarring.

With the right approach to logo design, your other brand building efforts will be easier to organize and deliver more cohesive, consistent results, so it’s worth investing time and effort to optimize this.