A lot of people talk about ‘brands’, but only a handful understand the meaning and most misinterpret the idea behind it. Businesses, entering the market with their products, must attract new customers by telling them about their products. A brand acts like a single, credible quality by which your products will be known and identified. Building a brand, or an easily recognizable product identity, is therefore, important.

A compelling logo design can help to convince your targeted audience of your merit and reason why they should opt for your products instead of your competitor’s. However, to make your brand successful,  logo designing isn’t enough.

You must avoid the following to stop your brand from fading from the customer’s mind:

1. Temporary Brand Goals

Brands may falter due to short-term or temporary brand goals. There are companies whose primary business focus is reaping high profits. Profits are important; it is the lifeline of any business, however, it is important to lay out your product benefits before selling them to your target audience. Chasing profits without earning the trust and admiration of your customers will do you no good. A brand not credible is a brand bound to fade.

2. Treating Brands as Products

Treating brands as mere products means making headway to inevitable doom. For instance, if McDonalds served only American fast-food without amusement, there would be no difference between a roadside shack and McDonalds! The brand satisfies its customer’s taste buds with fun, entertainment and convenience accompanying! That’s its USP (unique selling point) and why it has become popular with the young and old alike.

3. Not Adaptable to Change

Not being flexible and adapting to changing customer preferences is another reason why brands may fail. Quite simply, if you can’t give your customers what they need from you at any given moment, their interest is bound to fade. Apple, for example, has and continues to come up with advanced products and their versions with enhanced features every six months to keep up with technology, as well as satisfy its customers with the latest in technological development.

4. Failing Customer Expectations

Coke tried to introduce the ‘New Coke’ with a different taste and flavor but failed since customers found Coke touting a ‘Great Taste’, false.

It all boils down to getting your money’s worth from any product. False claims do more harm to a product than does any actual lack of merit. If your garment is prone to shrink after one wash, don’t claim it will not. People are less likely to notice the slight fade in color, but will certainly watch out for a comfortable fit post washing.

5. Not Monitoring the Brand Health

Brands may fail if businesses don’t monitor their brand’s health regularly. Improve your brand before it fades; take customer feedback seriously. Remember, it is easy to revive an unsuccessful product but hard to revive an unsuccessful brand.

A number of famous business logos, like Playboy, BBC, Louis Vuitton, WWF, Nike, etc, have their logos created with either black or white or shades closer to these two colors. A logo designer should know the various positives and negatives related with using black and white in logo design. He also needs to know how to blend these hues successfully with other colors to create appealing logos.

At times, using a greyscale mode, or Halftone Graphics mode, becomes imperative in logo design. There are several shades of grey that exist between white and black. When it comes to printing colors accurately, a designer needs in-depth knowledge of printing methodologies and color conversion. Veteran logo designers often start designing logos in greyscale mode and convert it to color mode when they are satisfied with the result. Because a logo using bright colors may require printing in greyscale mode, the greyscale version must be attractive.

It is also important to use image editing or page layout software to reproduce differences between subtle shades of grey when printing. Some such applications offer extra color palettes for halftone shades. At times, converting color to greyscale with an image manipulation app, just does not work, and instead, causes loss of contrast and tonal variation. Designers need to have solid knowledge of RGB and CMYK color models before designing their logos.

Working with a vector graphics based application is often necessary to maintain a level of quality in the artwork and keep design flexible. Logos may need to be expanded and squeezed depending on where they are being used – on websites, on banners, on billboards, etc. Vector images are ideal for altering image resolution without suffering loss of data. As opposed to raster images, vector images do not become pixelated or distorted when stretched.

A logo design professional must consider the psychological aspect of using black and white in his logo. Black can have different connotations depending on region and the context it is used in. It gels well with a corporate company, but using black as primary color in designing a logo for a baby care company, may not be a prudent idea. White can be used in combination with other colors for designing various types of logos.

When a client asks you to design a “symbol only” logo, designing it becomes more challenging than designing a logo using symbols and text. Here are few reasons that explain why designing a “symbol only” logo is a complicated process.

1. Not using the brand name or any other text in the logo design means designing the logo with a piece of graphic that may not be able to inform the target audience about the company or its business. For example, Apple. The half-eaten Apple hardly tells anything to its audience about the company. If it wasn’t for great advertising and many years of market presence, the logo would have faded into oblivion.
2. A logo must look unique. While you have only a few basic shapes to work with, you have to experiment with those shapes and come up with something unique that no other designer has designed before you. This can be challenging.
3. The symbol used in the logo should carry a single message which the target audience should be able to interpret easily. If potential customers misinterpret the design, or don’t get its meaning, the design will contribute little to boost the company’s brand identity.

4.  A “symbol only” logo can put you through a number of copyright issues. It is possible the symbol you have used has already been used by some other company. For example, the logos of Scottish Arts Council and Quark are same, except for their colors. To make sure you don’t copy someone else’s design, you need to check all the patented logos.

5. To make a brand popular, you need to promote their logo. For example, Sony Ericsson’s logo hardly says anything about the company or products it sells, but the logo is easily the most recognizable in the market because of the successful advertising campaigns used to promote it. If your client doesn’t have a budget to market and promote a “symbol only” logo, ask him to steer clear of symbols for logo design

If you want to design a “symbol only” logo, you need to give a lot more attention to details to make sure the design does not match any other existing logo’s design. You should also promote the logo heavily to make your users familiar with your business.

If you run a mid size company and don’t have millions to spend on your company’s logo design, you need other alternatives to design a logo. Logo designing softwares are the perfect solution for small companies who want to design their logos at cheap prices. There are some free online softwares that allow you to design beautiful logos for free or at a minimum price. However, are they as good as designs created by professional logo designers? Probably not, but these online softwares will allow even a non-designer to design a logo and save thousands of dollars.

Let’s find out the pros and cons of logo designing softwares.

The Pros of Logo Design Software

 It Saves Time - When you hire a logo designer, he takes weeks, even months to design a logo. You also have to keep reminding him about the deadline to make sure that you get the logo on time. When use a software however, you can create a logo in a matter of hours.

You Don’t Pay Anything - When you use softwares, you don’t spend a single penny on your logo’s design, except perhaps, buy the software at nominal costs. All you need to do is, download and install the software, design your own logo, customize it and use where you want. Even if you have money to hire a logo designer, you can save thousands of dollars this way and invest the money in business expansion.

Do It Yourself - When you hire a designer, he may deliver you something that you don’t like. With the help of an online logo designing software, you can log into your account and create a beautiful logo, exactly the way you want to.

You don’t even have to be a designer, that’s the greatest advantage of these softwares! You can design a logo without a degree in graphic design. Choose any symbol from the software library, add colors and fonts to give it a personalized look, and your logo is ready.

The Cons of Logo Design Software

• Copyright Infringement Issue- When you hire a logo designer for designing a logo, he creates a unique design for your company. A logo designing software only has standard symbols in their library. Some of those symbols may already be used by other famous companies. While you can customize the symbol and give it a new look, the possibility of copying someone else’s logo design is very high. You may unintentionally copy some other company’s logo due to the stock images you work with.

• You Can’t Design As You Wish- Though the softwares allow you to design a logo and customize it, you have to work with the given symbols and fonts. You can’t create something unique. Changing colors, font and rotating the symbol is not enough to create a remarkable logo.

• You Are Not Eligible To Design A Logo- Companies hire a logo designer to utilize their professional approach and designing expertise. If you think you can create the same quality logo without any knowledge in logo design, you are making a mistake. To create a memorable logo, you need to have enough knowledge in this field and unless you have it, you are bound to make terrible designing mistakes.

You can’t create a brilliant logo using softwares. Nevertheless, they are good alternatives for companies who don’t have requisite funds to hire designers. If you want to fulfill your desire to create a logo for your business and can’t spend much, online logo design softwares are ideal for you.