A logo is crucial for any business or brand as it is an important part of your brand identity. Professional logos are often the first visual cue a consumer has with regards to your product or service. Logos support instant brand recognition. If you have a blog, or you are ready to start blogging, you need a logo that will have a positive impact on your online image and branding.
This article is a brief logo guide, touching on what it takes to create a blog’s custom logo.
Why a blog needs its own logo
A strong logo communicates a clear message to your audience. A logo expresses your style and visual identity from the first second a person sees and interacts with your blog or brand. A logo is seen before a post is read, often visible on your website home page or social media channels.
Blogs benefit from logos as logos make them memorable and recognizable. If you want want blog and brand loyalty, and repeat readers of your blog posts, your blog needs a logo.
Creating an eye-catching logo
Logo design starts with ideas. Keeping a blog trendy with the latest visuals is also important to its success. The first thing we recommend is performing a competitors analysis to find out what other bloggers and small businesses use for logos – look for design elements, colors and font usage.
Research is key to creating a logo that speaks for itself and represents your style. It’s crucial to treat your blog as a brand when you work on the initial logo design.
Ask yourself and then answer these questions:
- What do I specialize in?
- What do I want to be known for?
- Will I promote a name, or an idea with my content?
- How is my blog different from others?
- What is my goal for this blog?
- Will I want to earn money with my blog in the future?
Keep these questions and answers in mind when you move forward with the logo creation process.
Understand your blog objective
Before you start working out your full design, you also need to fully understand your values, needs, and objectives.
This is important because listing your specific characteristics and your Unique Selling Point (USP) will help you better understand what your logo should look like.
Write a list of questions for yourself about your blog, like an interviewer would do, and try to answer them to get a better understanding of your project. Aim to express your values or things that set your blog apart from your competitors to make it strong and appealing.
Research design trends
A basic understanding of design trends can help you with logo design for your blog. Sure, tastes vary, but it’s best practice to keep up with trends when it comes to your visual identity and brand image.
The logo you choose should appeal to your target audiences. Depending on who you are trying to reach, you may decide to go minimalistic, contemporary, or artsy.
Try to envision what your logo will look like on your blogging platform, website, business cards, products and yes, even a t-shirt!
Add some color contrast
When it comes to logo design, all aspects of design matters. Color choice conveys a message. Experiment with contrasting colors. Opposite colors such as green and red or blue and yellow make the most attention-grabbing combinations.
Use bold fonts
Fonts are as important to a logo as colors, so pick your font(s) wisely. Choosing the right typeface will be dictated by your blog’s content and ideas. If you write about furniture, home design or have a beauty blog, you could opt for a fancy curly font. If you write about IT, technology, or digital trends, you could choose interesting futuristic fonts to make the logo appeal to your target audience.
Say more with less
As a general rule, make your logo as simple as possible. A blog logo is all about messaging: expressing who you are with style in a neat graphic form. It’s better to keep it simple instead of adding a lot of elements for a busy design. You can use a background removal tool to get rid of unnecessary elements in the background and replace the background with a basic color or design.
Last thoughts
Creating an outstanding logo yourself can be challenging if you are not a professional design studio. Using a logo generator, logo creator or a logo template only gets you so far. A good logo has the potential to boost your blog traffic and help with brand recognition: you need to treat it with care – consider hiring a professional for the final design phase.
If your blog has great content as well as great design, more people will read it. An appealing recognizable logo is one way to stand out and get noticed.
Anna Pozdeeva is a graduate from Moscow State University with a Bachelor’s degree in journalism. Currently a writer at Depositphotos covering visual culture and topics on marketing.