Hey guys, what's going on?
It's me, Will Paterson.
And today, I'm going to be sharing with you.
7 logo design tips that will actually blow your mind.
These things will help you so much and I bet you didn't know them.
This video is brought to you by SQUARESPACE.
The first step is that, the logo is the face.
It's not exactly what the company is.
A lot of the time logo designers are like to think that
They have to have what the company sells or the main thing
about the company on the logo.
For instance, a dog walker should have a dog in the logo, right?
Well, let's take a look at some of the most successful brands that we know.
So, let's look at Apple.
What do Apple sell? They sell technology, they sell phones.
They sell computers. In their Apple logo I don't see any tech.
Okay well, let's look at Sony.
They sell everything from cameras to TVs.
We don't see any TVs or anything in their logo.
When you're designing your logo, do not be afraid to go abstract
And go outside of the box.
Obviously, Apple's logo look very literal.
But let's say we're working for a tech company.
Does it have to have that product in the logo?
Or an abstract version? No, it doesn't.
It just has to be unique and identifiable. Number 2 is, keep it flexible.
A logo is designed
So it's functionally able to appear anywhere that people can see.
and remember. Hence why I talked a lot about functionality here on the channel.
If you can tear a logo into 10 little pieces and you can scale it up very big
and scale it down very small. Add a blur to it.
So when you take your glasses off and you squint, you can hardly see it.
Can you recognize it?
Well, if you can still recognize the logo after it's been distorted.
Then that generally means that it's a good design.
And that's what it was designed for.
Let's take a look at Target's logo.
Take that, chop it in half.
You still know it is Target's logo.
Let's take a look at Sony's logo, chop it in half.
There you go.
Sony's logo.
You still can see it. All of these different logos
have been made so that they are timeless that they don't have to be changed again.
And that is the way that it is working.
It's functional, works on the computer.
Works when it's small, it works when it's big. It can be printed.
It can be anywhere and it still works. Tip number 3 is, sketch 20 ideas.
So you're designing a logo and you're struggling to create ideas.
Well, here's one little thing you can do.
So, sit down with your sketchbook and your pencil
Set a timer for 10 minutes on your mobile, and then go ahead and start to draw 10 logos.
These sketches should be ideas, but you should not spend more than 1 minute.
On each logo.
What this does is it forces you to create simple shapes and simple ideas
Which is the bare bones and the foundations of all good logo designs.
I do this all the time, not so structured.
I'll just literally have a sketchbook that I don't show anyone else aside from you.
Because I've a logo design channel. Where I will draw the worst ideas in the world.
Generally speaking, when
I've drawn an idea that works and I've known that I've just drawn it in under a minute.
I know that it's so simple that it's going to work.
And if it fits all the criteria of it being appropriate, then
That logo is going to work. Before I go into the next one.
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Tip number 4 is be geometric.
All the best logos are geometric.
And that means that all the shapes inside of them were based upon geometry.
Including the Apple logo, it's based mainly on circles, and
That is why it looks so simple.
You look at Target's logo, it's made of circles.
The Twitter bird is made of circles.
A lot of logos like DPD in the UK are made of squares.
All these shapes are simple.
So if you're struggling to come up with an idea, start with the very simple shapes.
The square, the circle, the triangle, the rectangle.
All these shapes work very well.
Tip number 5 is start with black and white.
We live in a day and age where logos are mostly seen on screens.
So we can have them in any color that we like.
But the problem with this is that when we're designing a logo
that will have color on it.
We start to put the color on first.
So that means that we can start to illustrate more inside the logo
rather than show and give an illusion of color inside the logo.
Let me explain, if you have a logo that's got two colors in it.
Or three colors or three different shades or tones of the same color.
You can actually show and give the illusion of highlights and
dark spots in that logo to create a more of a 3D effect.
But you can actually do this with just black and white.
And the reason why we do with just black and white.
It's because it we use negative space instead of using tones
to create highlights or to give the illusion of depth in a logo.
We should be using black and white and using negative space to do this.
As it simplifies the design down.
Now, a lot of you may not agree with this because
You probably design logos like that, which is absolutely fine.
But make sure that you're using negative space correctly.
It's an important part of logo design. Tip number 6
Following on from the last one is, consistency in negative space.
I review a lot of logo designs and a lot of them from amateur logo designers.
Some of them are from professional ones as well.
And a lot of them are pretty good but the one mistake that
I see all the time is inconsistent shapes or spacing inside of the logo.
A logo is generally derived from positive space.
Which is the black or the color version of the logo.
And then anything that's blanked out is the negative space.
I see tons of logos that have inconsistent negative space.
Because the designer doesn't believe or understand or
Maybe they've just forgotten that the negative space is just as important as the positive one.
I'm going to use Target's logo again for this, the reason why
The circle in the middle is in the middle where it is, is because
there's enough contrast in the negative space from the outer circle to the inner one.
So no matter how scale down it is, you can still see the bullseye.
If the middle circle and the targets logos any bigger
and you scale the logo down, you wouldn't see very much of the negative space.
So exaggerating the negative space and balancing it out
and being consistent with it for its scale and size
is very important.
The final one number 7 is, drawing test.
Let's say you've designed a logo and you think it looks amazing.
But you need to test it before you send it to your client.
What do you do? Well, the most effective
And I would say probably one of the most easiest ways to do
is print off that logo onto a piece of paper
Or just show them on a phone or whatever.
Give it to your friend for one minute to look at.
Tell him to look at that logo.
And try and remember it for later on, go back to that friend a few hours later
with a pen and paper.
Give it in the hand and ask them to see if they can remember to draw that logo.
Your friend will probably be able to draw the logo if it works well.
If it's a good logo. But to make sure it's a very good logo
Keep in mind, how long they take to sketch that logo back.
If that friend or whoever it is, sketches the logo in less than a minute.
When they come back to you.
Then it's a very functional memorable and easy logo.
Which will be very good for the client.
Guys thank you so much for watching this video. If you did enjoy it
Please press that red subscribe button and share this video
To anyone who might find it interesting. Took me a long time to make this one.
So I'll see you in the next video.
Goodbye.