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Logo Design Tips for Beginners in 2020

25 December 2019

Generate logo design ideas: FakeClients.com

Logo design can be very free and intricate at the same time. Being an artist provides you with the opportunity to let your creative juices flow freely, but it also takes a lot of thought to come up with the perfect design that still fits your client’s wishes. To combine these two aspects can be quite difficult, especially for someone who is only just starting out. Therefore, you might want to keep these tips in mind when creating your next logo design.

Always keep practicing

Do not expect overnight success without a certain amount of exercise. No craft is mastered without a solid amount of practice. If you truly desire to become an experienced and skillful logo designer, make sure you put in a steady and consistent amount of practice each week. It does not have to be big and detailed, take a small sketchbook with you along the way and redesign an existing logo that you see around you for instance. It is all about the small moments you take to exercise your creative skillset that get you where you strive to be as an artist.

And if you happen to run out of logo designs to practice with, try using a logo design idea generator such as FakeClients.com, which gives you a brand new and originally generator logo design to work on by giving you a small and simple task with just enough guidelines. Simply go to FakeClients.com and click on the ‘start’ button to receive your design brief. If you seek even more detailed tasks, you can work with the longer pre-written briefs and even go pro when you run out of those as well. This also gives you the opportunity to then upload your finished logo design to the feedback section where other designers can criticize and help you improve your work.

Sketch before you draw digitally

Just like how constant practice can improve your skillset, sketching on paper before you go on a digital logo design program like Adobe Illustrator can help you an insane amount. Sketching on paper gives you more space to really think outside of the box and roam free with your pencil. If you sketch traditionally at first and then scan your sketch and redraw it digitally, it will give you the chance to fix potential problems you might run into earlier rather than later on the computer. It can also make the logo look more smooth and alive, and even more so if you have a slower computer of a pen, you might experience a lag which can be very annoying when sketching your logo designs digitally. It is also easier to practice on paper because it is easily portable and more mobile than a digital designing station often is.

Think of the meaning behind the company

Logo design is not just about having a logo that looks unique and clean. Even though those are important for a good logo as well, the main thing is that it goes along with the company itself. If the logo does not match the morals of the business it is supposed to be portraying, it is still not a great logo, no matter how amazing it looks. Think for instance of the Harley Davidson logo, it looks cool, tough and still very classy and old skool, which perfectly fits the look of their motorcycles and clothing. This is very different from for instance twitter, who have a very happy and upbeat logo to support the safe and pleasantness of their social media platform. Incorporating a certain meaning into a logo can be as simple as choosing the right color, seeing as most colors are associated with certain feelings or vibes. For instance, red is often seen as power, love or anger (like Red Bull), while orange is seen as creative, friendly and energetic (like Nickelodeon or Fanta).

Furthermore, you have purple as royal, wise and spiritual, white as clean, holy and pure, pink as fun and flirty, yellow as optimistic, happy and hopefull, green as organic and growth, blue as professional, calm and trustworthy, brown as historical, wholesome and nature, grey as conservative and formal and black as powerful, mysterious and credible.

Keep it simple

Last but not least, do not make your logo more difficult than it needs to be. Logos should be clean and simple seeing as they need to be easily usable on different platforms and in different sizes. It is very nice if your logo as a unique and interesting twist, like the FedEx logo for example, but it has to be spottable and understandable within a few moments. You do not want someone to look at a logo with sheer confusion, which can be the cause of a logo design that is made too intricately.

A combination is key

Each of these tips has his own positive influence on your logo, and even though you might not have to use them all at the same time, for instance, a formal logo design does not always have to be grey and some logos ask for a more detailed and complicated design, a combination of these tips really is the key to improving your logo designing skills. And for those who are just starting out, a great way to begin designing in the right direction really is a constant practice and making sure you think of what the meaning behind your logo is instead of just what people will initially see on the outside.