Hi again. This is Rich Cruz, a marketing professional in the Chicago area. I’m presenting an ongoing series of videos to show business owners and entrepreneurs just exactly how I help my customers to build their business’ digital presence online.
I’m not going to go too much into a story today. But, in my career I’ve designed hundreds of logos for a wide variety of organizations. I remember very early on I created a logo for a doula, a woman who is employed to provide guidance and support to a pregnant woman during labor. This was a peachy-pink logo with a modified Angelique font used for the lettering and a custom lotus flower held in caring hands. My client was really happy with that logo, and I think it really did help her to be quite successful in her business.
What Is a Logo
A logo is a graphic representation of your company. It’s a symbol or a design that is used by an organization to brand themselves visually. They can be used with our without letters.
Some very famous logos out there such as Starbuck’s Mermaid, McDonald’s Golden Arches, and Target’s bullseye are instantly recognizable. That’s what you are looking for in your own business.
What Should You Have in Your Logo?
Typically, I recommend two parts to a logo:
- An avatar or icon… an image that fits nicely into a square space.
- The name of the company
Your logo should have a limited color palette (1-3 colors is normally recommended). The colors should be made to be readable on certain backdrops, and they should reflect what psychological effect you want to have on your clients.
For instance, blue tends to be a color that elicits feelings of trust. Therefore, it’s often used for banks and a wide variety of business services. Other colors have other meanings.
To learn more about colors, contrasting and complimentary color schemes, and the psychological effects of color on the reader, here’s a link to a great resource: https://coschedule.com/blog/color-psychology-marketing/
Graphic Formats
I highly recommend that you have a logo made in several different formats:
- Vector – vector files are graphic files which are based on mathematical and geometrical objects. They are infinitely scalable without losing quality. They are great to use for print, though some digital formats now support vector formats. You’ll usually find vector objects created using Adobe Illustrator. The file types often associated with vector files are .ai (Adobe Illustrator), PDF, EPS, and SVG.
- Raster – raster files are the other kind of graphic format. These are what photographs are what constitute digital photographs. They are pixel-based or dot-based graphics. The quality of the image degrades as the image gets bigger or shrinks. Files types often associated with rather files are: .psd (Photoshop), TIF, JPEG, and PNG.
Typically, your online presence including websites, social media, and email use raster graphics. A quick note: if you want a transparent background online, choose a PNG or SVG file. If you don’t, you can use a JPEG or PNG file. GIF files are also raster-based files which can be found online.
How to Make a Logo
In my video, I’m showing you how I would go about making a logo for “Building My Digital Business”. I’m going to use Adobe Illustrator to create an avatar and a type-set version of the name with a nice font. Working in Illustrator, I’ll save the file as a vector file.
Then, I’m going to convert that logo to a raster-based file by opening it in PhotoShop, sizing it appropriately, and saving it as a JPEG and as a PNG file.
One reason why I recommend making an avatar/icon as part of your logo is that most social media platforms ask you to give you a square-formatted image for your profile, Gravitar (avatar used largely by WordPress), and favicon (the little tiny picture found in the tabs of your browser).
Here’s the final result of my logo including the color scheme I like. Now, we are armed with a plan, a name, and now a brand. Let’s get started on building the website for this company.
If you found this video of any help, please be sure to follow this video and like and share on whatever platform you found it. Thanks! I’ll see you on the next video.
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