How to Create a Logo for Brands, Companies, and Apps?

If you want to build a strong online brand, start with a good logo that appeals to your target audience and reflects your company's philosophy. As a designer, my standards are high. The logo must not only stand out from the competition but also be understood by customers.

In this guide, I want to share tips and tricks from my daily practice that you should consider if you want to develop a good logo.

My 5 Basic Rules for a Logo:

To meet current standards, I have established 5 rules that should always be followed:

The logo must be a vector graphic and not an image file, so it can be resized without loss.
The logo must look good on smartphones. Create responsive rules for this.
The logo must be clear and legible, so the name can be remembered.
The logo must be simple. Avoid unnecessary information.
The logo must remain constant. Recognition is very important.

What makes a good logo for me?

The logo is the symbol of the brand, consisting of letters, colors, shapes, and tells the company's story. The logo should be unique, aesthetic, and memorable.

3 Tips & Tricks I Follow:

Use negative space to convey more information.

Use the Golden Ratio for more aesthetic proportions.

Merge symbols together to create something unique.

My Creative Process for Logo Design

1. Getting to Know the Target Audience

If the company doesn't know its target audience or wants to reach a new one, it's my job to find out through research & analysis. With personas, surveys, and data analysis, I can get to know the target audience and build a connection with them.

• How old are the customers?
• How much budget do the customers have?
• What expectations do the customers have?
• What do the customers like about products?
• Where are the customers located?

2. The Story Behind the Company or Application

After the target audience, I want to learn more about the company or the application. What goals, values, and characteristics does it represent? To get a better picture, I first look for adjectives that describe the company or app. Then I interview founders, department heads, and employees to gather more information that will later be incorporated into the logo design.

• What does the company or application do?
• Why was the company founded?
• What does the company believe in?
• What makes the company or application special?
• Who does the company compete with?
• For whom was the application developed?

3. Time for Brainstorming

Now the creative phase begins. First, I work out all connections and similarities from the collected information. Then I write down all the keywords that come to my mind about the industry, the company, and the target group. In the last step, everything is filtered again and reduced to the essentials.

Important: Always set a time limit, otherwise you will never finish.

Brainstorming and subsequent filtering, as well as the reduction of information, have produced meaningful keywords. These can consist of nouns and verbs. Now I look for suitable icons for the different keywords, e.g., at flaticon or freeicons. From the collected icons, I create a symbol matrix, which serves as an overview and supports the creative logo development process, allowing all symbols to be captured at a glance.

After several hours of scribbling, many different variants emerge. Here are a few examples:

I realized that the speech bubble looks like a brain and added some tree rings, which stand for further development and growth.

Since adjectives are difficult to represent as icons in the symbol matrix but are often important to describe a company, I use font, colors, and shapes to "depict" adjectives. Here too, many variations are created to achieve the best result.

4. Logo Examples in Practice

To help you better imagine the logo in everyday life and in practical use, I recommend creating product mockups of your logo. For example, you can find free mockups at freepik . If you don't have Photoshop, I highly recommend photopea .

Conclusion: Creating a logo should not be underestimated.

To create a good logo, it takes not only time for customer research and industry knowledge but also a pronounced sense of affect logic and spatial imagination.

If you want to take the topic seriously, I advise you to create a corporate design manual/style guide instead of just designing a logo.

If you liked my guide, give me 5 stars and write a nice comment.