When launching a new business, there are many components that need to be put in place. In addition to the basics of product development, forming a corporate structure, obtaining the proper legal documents and assembling a core team, giving a new business its brand identity, particularly its logo, is critical. However, with initial budgets tight, new entrepreneurs are tempted to cut corners when visually representing their offers. Many of these fast fixes can quickly lead to headaches.
In the hurried excitement to establish your company’s presence in the marketplace, a rushed logo can be disastrous. Your logo is your target audience’s first impression of your offering. As you’ll be living with your logo for a while and implementing it throughout your marketing and sales materials, you want to love it, feel that it conveys your messages and find it flexible to utilize in a variety of medias.
When thinking about creating a logo, start with the process called “discovery.” This is the opportunity to dive into the “what” and “whys” of your business. Discovery will help you perform a brand assessment and identify your offering’s values, messages, features and goals. You may also undercover information about your target market and help create profiles of your users. You will pinpoint demographic information such as age range, geography, and user habits. In User Experience terms, this is called creating “Personas,” fictional people who would buy or use your product. Additionally, you will explore creative options regarding color, voice, tone, imagery, language, etc. that will help reinforce your business’ values and messages.
As you and your team go through this journey, you’ll find out many things that you may not have even considered when you conceived and developed your ideas. If you have team members who participate in the discovery process, you may uncover different perceptions about your business that can either be included or discarded. This can help your team understand and agree about your offering’s messages and goals. Hopefully, the discovery process will elicit a few laughs along the way and help with team building.
Once you put all of these pieces together, the results should be documented. When you or your designer is ready to craft your logo and identity, you will have a guide, that can inform creative choices. Taking the time at the beginning of your logo and identity design process will ensure that you will build a brand that directly and clearly speaks about your business saving you time and money when implemented through all of your marketing channels.