Brands are all around us all the time. Whether we’re watching ads for the latest meal at McDonald’s on TV, scrolling past a social media post for the newest Apple product set to hit shelves, or passing by a billboard for a fresh pair of Nikes, we are constantly interacting with brands and the businesses behind them. Branding helps to differentiate businesses from one another. One essential branding tool is the creation of company logos, distinct graphics that companies use to symbolize themselves.
For instance, you likely recognize the logos of the three companies mentioned above: McDonald’s golden arches, Apple’s literal fruit imagery, and Nike’s signature swoosh. However, there’s often some confusion when it comes to differentiating logos and branding. Are logos a part of branding? Are logos and branding the same thing? Which comes first, the brand or the logo? Luckily, we’re here to help with a breakdown of differences between logo design and branding, and how both are essential to businesses.
What is a Logo?
As mentioned above, a logo is a unique graphic that a company uses to symbolize itself visually to consumers. A logo is synonymous with the company that it represents, and can be easily recognized by consumers. Logos typically consist of fonts, colors, graphics, and visual shapes that are unique to the company that the logo has been created for. A logo can be used by a company in a variety of ways: placed on their products and advertisements, within emails and letters, as the icon for social media accounts, on gift cards and business cards, as well as on the marquee of brick-and-mortar storefronts that the company owns and operates out of. The more consumers see a logo, the more quickly they will be able to associate it with a brand, and remember that company after the fact. As such, logos are an essential part of developing a business’ brand, and helping to build customer awareness.
How Do You Create a Successful Logo?
In order to create a successful logo, it’s important to take the time to consider how you want to represent your company in a visual manner. For instance, what fonts do you think would best fit your company – are they big and bold, or sleek and thin? In addition to font, you’ll also want to determine what kind of colors would best suit the mood and tone of your company when choosing a color palette for your logo, as different colors can make people feel different things when looking at them. Finally, you’ll want to consider the images and shapes that you utilize in your logo design. It’s helpful to choose images that relate to the name of your company (i.e., Apple’s literal Apple logo), or images that evoke the values of your brand.
When it comes to physically designing your logo, you might want to consider using an online logo maker, which utilizes AI software to create a wide array of potential logo designs based on a series of questions pertaining to your design preferences. Logo makers are both time and cost efficient, as they can produce a large amount of potential designs within minutes, often for a low price, or even no cost at all. In addition to their AI generated logos, many logo makers also provide templates that you can toy with on your own to create the exact logo that you want.
What is Branding?
Branding is a term that describes the ways in which a company differentiates itself from other businesses in order to stand out to consumers. In order to come up with a successful branding strategy, it’s essential to consider your company’s core values and how you hope to enact them. One key part of branding is logo design, as your logo sums up those values into a single image. Other key parts of branding include the products that you offer, social media presence, customer interactions, and company culture. All of these factors help to cumulatively create your company’s overall brand.
Which Comes First – Logo Design or Branding?
In order to create a logo that appropriately represents your business, you’re going to want to start by developing your brand first. By thinking about the words that you would use to describe your company’s core values and goals, you can cultivate a clearer picture of what your brand is and how you’d like to represent it in logo form.
In Conclusion
Logo design is a key component of growing a company’s brand, as a logo represents a brand within a single image. By creating a unique logo that speaks to the values of your company, you’ll be able to better connect with consumers and increase your brand awareness. In what ways do you think that creating a unique logo could help to further a business’ branding endeavors?
