- Cause it's hard to make something from scratch
- Yeah.
Trust me.
Now did you know that colors actually have
a hidden meaning?
- I have a logo so,
how often should I change it?
Welcome to The Journey,
today we're gonna cover tips to make a great logo
that will empower your brand.
All right Nealey, so, thinking about a logo,
I know it brings me back to when I first started
Coffee and Kickflips and thinking about
what I wanted my logo to do,
who I wanted to speak to,
there was a lot of intent involved, right, purpose,
but can you speak to that a little bit more?
- Yes, your logo, it should be intentional,
you shouldn't just create some random thing,
like your Coffee and Kickflips,
you don't want a picture of a rocket ship
or something on it right?
- Yeah, it'd make no sense. - Your logo has to be about
your brand and your business
and it has to really represent you,
so that's why it's super important to be intentional
with what your logo is because, at the end of the day,
that's what people will remember,
like they see your logo somewhere like oh,
it's Coffee and Kickflips, or oh that's Nike
or oh that's Apple,
they're iconic and they represent that brand.
- All right Nealey so I know there are different types,
different kinds of logos out there like with Apple
it's just a logo, Google it's the words.
- Yeah.
- So what else is there?
- So there are fundamentally three different types of logos
that you can create,
there's Lettermark,
there's Wordmark and then there's Brandmark.
Now what these actually mean, so,
Wordmark that's like Google, like you brought up,
that's literally just a word, right?
And that's your logo itself.
All right now the second option is
a Lettermark.
So think of just initials, right?
So I know on your phone, do you have any icons
or logos that are just initials?
- Oh, Facebook, and Pinterest.
- Perfect, right?
All right, which brings me to the last one, the Brandmark.
These are just icons or symbols
like Apple like you brought up.
What are some other things that are just iconic
with just a symbol?
- Oh, Instagram.
Oh and Twitter.
- Yeah, those are just little symbols, right?
But they mean so much more.
You see the Instagram logo, the Twitter logo,
you don't just say, oh that's a bird, oh that's a camera.
You go, that's Instagram, that's Twitter.
- Right.
- And then the fourth option, little bonus tip for you is,
a combination, like I know you with Coffee and Kickflips,
had a combination, right?
- That's what we did. - Which ones did you use?
- Uh we had the words, Coffee and Kickflips,
then we came up with a logo as well.
- Yeah and on your site you have both, right,
that's super common to do,
and you can use it interchangeably.
- All right Nealey, so I know a lot of time was spent
on design when I was coming up with Coffee and Kickflips,
thinking a lot about color, and,
I know there's more than that, there's more than just color
what else should we be considering
when coming up with design?
- Yeah, so let's start off with kind of the basics
of just framing, right, if you have a square box here,
you don't want your logo to be in the entire box,
you want a little bit of negative space in it,
so it's not super overwhelming, and kind of look at
the placement of the logo.
Do you want it to be front and center,
do you want it to follow kind of the rule of thirds
where it's on the side of it and it has a little bit more
negative space, makes it a little bit more appealing.
- You know who changed it up recently?
- Who is that?
- Facebook.
- Oh yeah, didn't they move it over slightly?
- Yeah.
You're all at home looking at your phones now right?
- Like oh gosh, it did change.
- Oh, it did.
- It's something that's not very noticeable
but it's more of just a little bit of a brand change for 'em
Now the next thing you wanna think about is
does your logo look good at different sizes?
Right?
Now what might look good super humongous blown up
may not look good as maybe an app icon
or a Favicon or something like that,
so it's super important to think of--
- Or a logo on a t-shirt, or a hat.
- Yeah.
I know you talked about it earlier,
with really figuring out the colors for your logo,
what colors did you end up choosing for your logo?
- So I went with red, for the skateboarder,
and the coffee cup because it's energy,
and then I went with espresso brown for the coffee theme
so when I combined Coffee and Kickflips,
it brought together the two.
- Yeah, you were really intentional with your colors
which is super important.
Now did you know that colors actually have a hidden meaning?
- I have heard that like,
blue is supposed to be calming, right?
- Yeah, exactly, which is super cool why you chose red
especially having a skate park in the back,
red is boldness and excitement and just out there.
- Get amped.
- And then brown, not only does it represent coffee,
like it's a pretty normal color
but it also represents comfort.
Like when I'm in your coffee shop, I wanna be comfortable,
'cause I'm chilling before I go out the back
and start skating, right?
- And coffee to me is a daily comfort, you know,
it's the way I start my day every day.
- Perfect and if you wanna really understand
the different color theories just go to Google,
go to just search color theory
and look up what each color means
because if your brand represents one thing
and you're using a different color
then it's going to throw off your audience, like wait,
what are you all about?
Cause even though we may not think about it right away
there's a subconscious that just instinctively knows.
All right and the last tip that I can give you
with really making your logo
is the font choices that you use.
If you're a coffee shop and a skate park,
you probably don't wanna use a font
that's just rigid and boring,
you want something kind of out there.
- Bold. - Now if you're a bank,
you probably don't wanna use comic sans
cause that doesn't really build trust or dependability.
Yet the font choice is everything.
Google.com/fonts has a ton of options
to really kind of look for, to see what might be right
for your business cause there are plenty of fonts out there
just make sure it represents you.
- Yeah.
- All right Emma, do you want me to show you
some examples of how I make a logo super fast?
- Absolutely.
- Let's do it.
- All right Nealey, so you obviously covered
a ton of great tips on how to empower your brand,
now I wanna see, you say you can design anything but,
show me how it's done.
- Right, so a lot of us aren't just graphic designers
or we haven't been doing this a long time,
we need something that's just easy and quick
which is why time and time again I'll always say,
checkout Canva, it's free to use for the most part and--
- I love free.
- You could literally create anything,
this is not an endorsement, I just love Canva that much.
So on Canva here you can see there's "Create a Design".
There's lots of different things we can use
but we're making a logo so I of course wanna click logo.
- [Emma] Got it,
- [Nealey] It'll take me to-- - [Emma] Step one.
- [Nealey] Step one.
It'll take me to a new page and I have a blank canvas
this is where my logo is gonna go.
Now on the left-hand side, it's gonna give me templates
which is gonna be super important
cause it's hard to make something from scratch.
- Yeah, trust me.
- This makes it super easy.
Now you can scroll down and kind of check out
all the different templates they have
and there's literally hundreds upon hundreds
but, we're making a new one for Coffee and Kickflips,
so we're gonna go ahead and just search coffee up here.
Now you can do the same-- - [Emma] Oh, cool.
- [Nealey] with your business
and just put your industry or your vertical,
your niche, however you wanna call it.
Now what I can do is I can click on one of these,
and boom, it's right there.
And now editing it is even easier, so--
- [Emma] I like that font.
- [Nealey] Clicking in here, Coffee and Kickflips.
- [Emma] Okay.
- [Nealey] So now if I wanna move things around I can click
this coffee pot looking thing
and click and drag it over here.
- [Emma] Okay.
- [Nealey] And if I wanna scratch this,
I don't like it, I'll pick a different template.
- [Emma] Let's scratch it.
Okay, sorry, you did coffee, which I like,
but can I add something, like we search skateboarding
so then I can get--
- Yes. - And over
okay.
- So on the left-hand side
you have all your different options.
So photos you can get some pretty cool, just stock photos.
- [Emma] And this is also free?
- Most of it's free.
- Okay, cool.
- It's like freemium so some of their,
like premium content they're gonna ask you
to either pay for it, or they're gonna ask for you
to pay for their subscription, it's how it exists, right?
- Yeah.
- But elements is where you wanna go.
- [Emma] Elements, okay.
- [Nealey] You search skateboard.
- [Emma] Yeah let's see what they have.
- [Nealey] So skateboard.
- [Emma] Or we could just throw in some photos of us, but--
- [Nealey] That's it, and bam. - [Emma] Oh cool.
- [Nealey] Look at all these skateboards,
and you can kind of just scroll through
and see what you want.
- [Emma] Yeah, I want that, that's clean.
How did you know?
It's like you read my mind.
- [Nealey] And then here.
- [Emma] Yes.
- [Nealey] Coffee and Kickflips. - [Emma] Oh this is crisp.
- An alternative to this is Adobe Spark
it's similar to Canva, or there's some other free
logo makers out there as well,
it's just the one that I recommend for most first time users
to get started.
- Yeah.
All right Nealey so, I have a question
that I'm sure a lot of you do at home.
I have a logo, so, how often should I change it?
- That makes sense, and if you really love your logo
and it fits for you, probably potentially never,
but if it's time to really modernize
and maybe get a fresh look, that fresh coat of paint
on the house, right?
It might be time to really rebrand.
- All right so I know I did my own logo,
it was quite fun.
But what if you don't wanna do that
and you don't find that to be fun?
- Yeah, and it's okay right?
Some of us are not visually creative
they'd rather just hire a pro to make it look just amazing.
So there are freelancers, there are agency
there are designer firms, there are all sorts of people
that can make you a logo that is you.
Now, again with hiring anybody in the creative field,
you wanna really look at their portfolio.
Because every designer, every agency,
has really their style, I would call it.
- Totally.
- The logos that they use.
So their style may not be what you're looking for,
'cause at the end of the day, this is your brand,
your vision, you want your logo to really represent that
and elevate it.
All right so I hope you enjoyed these tips
to make a great logo that will really empower your brand.
And hey, let us know in the comments below,
what was your favorite tip, or give us a link to the logo.
- Oh, great idea, also, great idea, like this video
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