Looking to give your brand a facelift or just starting out and wondering what look should represent your company? It’s important to consider a number of factors when creating a brand image including color, weight, graphics, consistency, and transferability. Making the right decision is crucial as your brand logo is the first, and most frequent, thing people see when interacting with your company.

Color

The colors you use in your brand are of the most importance. The color instantly communicates emotion and influences consumers. Red makes people hungry and communicates a sense of urgency and excitement. Blue promotes trust and security in brands. Green is associated with health and tranquility. Orange and yellow increases cheerfulness and optimism. Purpose conveys royalty, wisdom, and respect, while blacks are bold, communicating authority, power, stability, and strength. White inspires feelings of safety, purity, and cleanliness. Make sure to pick one primary color to use in your logo, and, at most, one accent color to minimize clutter and visual complication.

Weight

The weight of lines and shapes, as well as text, within your logos and imagery, also communicates to consumers. Light, thin strokes and typefaces signify sophistication and elegance. Bold, strong weights are impactful and demand attention. Depending on your product or service and the kind of message you are communicating, picking the right stroke to use is vital.

Graphics

Should you include graphics in your logo or use simple shapes or use text only? Each of these options provides different benefits and challenges. Graphics can communicate far more information than a shape or text-only brand images. However, they can be distracting and hard to transfer onto business cards and letterheads or see when scaled down to small sizes. Text-only logos can be simple and straightforward but are harder to integrate color and graphic messaging.

Consistency

Make sure to keep your brand image consistent across all communication and forms. Integrate the same primary and accent color across all communication.

Transferability

Design your logo with a global context in mind. You want to make sure the colors and graphics you choose to communicate across cultures.