Your company's visual identity or logo, is likely to be the most important, hard working graphic design your business will have, as it generally remains with you for the life of the business.

Going about creating it quickly or half-heartedly could be damaging for your business now and in the future because if it doesn't reflect your brand properly and function practically when aksed to, it could confuse or alienate your audience, prospects and buyers. It will fail and your business will find it much harder to prosper. This must be seen as an investment just as with staff or production machinery, for instance.

To begin with ask yourself a few basic questions:

1. Do we go the design agency or DIY route?
2. Is it clear what market we are in and the type of customers we want to attract?
3. Does the business have any close competitors with similar icons, colours or logos?

These may sound quite obvious but in answer to them:

1. Use a professional agency if you're serious about your long term plans for your business. This is one area you need to get right, especially at the beginning, or it can go spectacularly wrong.
2. Once your business vision is mapped out, then the logo or identity can be visually matched to your value proposition and early concepts drafted.
3. If so, think carefully about the name and its logo. The company can be registered as one 'legal' name but branded differently in front of its audience so the 'match' works better (trading as etc).

Spending time with a professional designer who will understand and listen to your business needs and aspirations, likes and dislikes etc. is a crucial first stage of any logo creation or re-fresh. They will also know what will work where, how and in what colour or context will be a good fit for your business - ultimately delivering a well-matched, distinctive, professionally designed piece of work.

Your company's logo:

• Describes who you are and what you do
• It is unique to your company
• Builds memory
• Needs to be fairly future proof
• Must be able to fit anywhere

If a company is to have aspirations to be commercially successful then they need to be starting out in the correct way with a professionally designed and relevant logo and accompanying brand identity that will help take them there. It lives in the memory of their clients, it appears everywhere; On their website, blog, social media, stationery, marketing, vehicles, exhibitions, signage, adverts….. and so on.

Most importantly a cheaply sourced logo design representing a fast growing company will be difficult to disassociate from. If the aspirations and 5+ year plan for the business are not present in the the early design and thinking then it will be harder to get there.

Some dos and don'ts when considering a new logo:

1. Make sure your design matches your proposition. A poorly thought out or DIY logo design will soon create negative thoughts with your customers and likely turn off valuable propsects.
2. Avoid inserting an icon within the name and never use imagery as this cannot be reproduced corectly (think of it as a really simple, scalable graphic).
3. Think about the places it will eventually be seen - try to think into the future too.
4. Once you have your poropsition mapped out, seek early input from a creative agency, even if you are only just considering your new company name.It can be a beneficial meeting.
5. Work with your chosen designer during the concept process and be honest with them. Let them do their creative thing and then ask for 3-5 of their best early ideas to be presented back to you, however sketchy.
6. Once you have narrowed down the design choice, sleep on it for a day or two. At the very least your designer should be offering you logos that work on the web, in various print scenarios and also at large format. Not just offering you one downloadable jpeg file!

We can help you on this important journey with some initial advice over the phone or better still meet for a chat.

1. We deliver logo packs to suit your needs and budget and we always declare what we will do before proceeding.
2. We also provide fully scaleable artwork that is professionally prepared for all the various print processes, plus versions for digital, screen and web.
3. If you need to control how the logo is used we will be more than happy to provide simple to follow guideline documents too - basic to detailed.

Most importantly your company logo works for you right around the clock, 365 days a year!