Designing your logo is an exciting part of building your beauty brand. It’s also very complex, and shortcuts can be tempting. But beware—shortcuts can leave you with a sloppy logo that won’t help you achieve your goals.
Your logo design is important. It should be unique, memorable, simple, and versatile. Here’s how to get there, and avoid these common beginner mistakes.
Mistake #1: Using Clip Art
Using free and accessible designs like stock art and clip art seems like a quick and easy way to design a logo, and it is quick … but it’s also one of the worst ways to create your brand’s logo.
This is because your logo should be unique to you and your brand. When people see it, they should feel good about your brand right away. But if your logo includes generic clip art, your logo—the visual identifier of your brand—isn’t unique. Clip art is easy to use because it’s available to everyone. This also means that lots of other logos will have the same look.
Do this instead:
Use clip art as a starting point, to generate ideas for your logo. It’s completely fine to use clip art as inspiration, as long as you’re not using it in the finished product.
Mistake #2: Using Photos
Photos can be great while you’re working on branding your website, packaging, etc. But don’t use them when you’re creating your logo.
The best logos are simple and can be printed in different colors depending on the background and printing medium. But pictures are complex, with lots of shading and different shapes. Remember that part of the purpose of your logo is simplicity. Pictures work against that aim.
If you’re thinking, “Okay, so I’ll trace an image for my logo,” don’t. If the image is copyrighted, then even tracing it for commercial use is illegal. If you use a copyrighted image, you might have to change your logo (best case scenario) or even pay reparations.
Finally, they just don’t scale well. Your logo should look great no matter how it’s sized, and photos are tricky if they’re very big or very small.
Do this instead:
Use pictures in your mood board, not your logo. Photos make great inspiration, whether you took them yourself or found them in print or online. Use them to contribute to brainstorming sessions on the desired look and feel of your logo. Just keep them out of the finished product.
Mistake #3: Designing on a Logo Creation Website
There are lots of websites out there that claim to “help” you create a logo (Instalogo, Logomaker, Logoyes, and LogoSnap, to name a few).
These sites make a lot of the mistakes listed here, including use of clip art and basic fonts. They also have very limited options for customization, which means you can’t make your logo as unique as it should be.
Sure, you might end up with a logo that looks good. But it will also look very similar to the thousands of other logos created on that same website.
And proceed with caution on sites like 99Designs or Fiverr, too.
Lots of “designers” on these sites will copy other designs to produce yours, or they just won’t do great work. When it comes to logo design, remember that you get what you pay for. Simply paying some money for a logo doesn’t mean you’re going to end up with a good logo.
Do this instead:
Use these websites for inspiration and to get ideas, and then take those ideas elsewhere. If you’re going to hire a professional designer, make sure the process of creating your beauty brand logo is thoughtful and truly representative of your brand story and core values. Crème de Mint specializes in beauty brand logo design and has created logos for many successful beauty brands—contact us for a free 30-minute consultation!
Mistake #4: Being a Copycat
This should go without saying, but never copy, borrow, or outright steal a design that you like. Ethics aside, it’s just not worth the legal risk. With reverse image search and all the myriad possibilities of the internet at our fingertips, it’s incredibly easy for companies to find logos that look too close to their own.
And don’t forget, one of the key purposes of your logo is to generate something completely unique to you and your business. You don’t want a design that’s representative of anyone else’s business. It should just be yours.
Do this instead:
Collect logos you really like and share them with your designer. This will give them a great idea of what aesthetic you want to go for in your own design. Try to determine exactly what you like about each logo that speaks to you, and then get creative about how you could pull some of those elements into your own brand logo.
Mistake #5: Trying to be Trendy
Design follows trends, just like fashion and art do. At any given moment, certain colors and styles will be “in,” while others won’t be. But you want your logo to stand the test of time, so be careful not to lean too hard into a trend that’s only hot for now. If you do, your logo may look dated before your beauty brand really gets off the ground.
Yes, it’s possible for your logo to evolve over time as your brand does, but you’ll want the essential elements to stay the same. So give yourself some wiggle room with trends and try to pick something timeless.
Do this instead:
Focus on your business, not on trends. When you pay more attention to the story, emotions, and core ideas behind your brand than to what’s trendy, you’ll end up with a logo that will stand the test of time.
Mistake #6: Being Cliché
Some symbols have been used so often that they’re too cliché to grab anyone’s attention, like using a lightbulb to represent an idea. Your logo should be unique and intriguing, and using an image that everyone is used to seeing to mean one thing is neither.
Do this instead:
Get creative. If you’re attached to using a lightbulb in your design, how can you take that concept and turn it on its head so the cliché works for you? And don’t get stuck on your first ideas and stop there. Your brain will naturally bring up the most common visuals to start with. Push yourself to go further.
Review your brand story, values, and goals, and keep all of them top of mind when you’re thinking about what to include in your beauty brand logo design.
Everything from the great outdoors to your home’s architecture can be visually inspiring, so allow yourself to pay attention to your environment. Get inspired, and make a note of any unusual associations that pop into your brain.
Mistake #7: Trying to Do Too Much
Your logo should help convey what’s unique about your brand, yes—but it can’t tell your whole story for you. So don’t burden your logo with communicating everything about your brand, or it will quickly become cluttered and incomprehensible.
Your logo should be simple, because simple images are inherently more memorable.
If there’s more of your brand story to tell, do it in your marketing collateral and additional information about your brand (on your website, for instance). Trust that your logo will convey your core ideas and values, without having to be complicated.
Do this instead:
Keep it simple. When you think your logo is done, ask yourself: is there anything I can take away without hurting the meaning?
Focusing on the basics of a design won’t just make it simpler. You’ll make it stronger.
Mistake #8: Matching Your Competitors
Make your brand pop with colors, shapes, fonts and images that your competitors aren’t using. Imagine your beauty brand logo on a shelf next to your competitors’ logos. What would catch someone’s eye and make them look at yours first? The more distinct your logo is, the better.
Do this instead:
Check out the competition before you start to design your own logo. Get a good feel for what’s out there and note any trends you see, including shapes, fonts, and colors that are commonly used. Use this as a basis for things to avoid in your own logo.
Mistake #9: Skipping the Research
You may not notice it in your everyday life, but colors have specific psychological meaning. Do the research before you pick your colors, and be thoughtful about your selections. You don’t just want colors that you like; you want colors that fit with your brand.
Do this instead:
Do the research and make sure you aren’t creating negative feelings in your target customers, or causing any cultural confusion in the markets you’ll be selling to.
Also, you can’t rely on colors alone to make your logo work. Be sure you can adapt your logo to black and white, too. Start by working in black and white, and add color last.
Mistake #10: Choosing a Bad Font
There are tens of thousands of fonts out there, but only hundreds of commonly used ones. If you pick one of these, your logo won’t be very unique. Some fonts are difficult to read or look awkward with certain letter combinations.
A few that you should probably steer clear of are: Chancery Script, Papyrus, Impact, Arial, Comic Sans, Bradley Hand, Brush Script, Curlz, Trajan, Courier, Lucida Handwriting, and Lucida Handwriting.
Do this instead:
Pick unique fonts that are easy to read, and keep the number of fonts to a minimum (use a max of two). This will improve the readability of your design and help with brand recognition, too.
Also, pay attention to kerning. Kerning refers to the spacing between letters. You might notice that free fonts have spacing that can look awkward. That’s one benefit to buying paid professional fonts instead—that, and fewer brands use them. You want to make sure the space between letters in your logo is pleasing to the eye, so pay attention to the overall effect.
Bonus Mistake: Using Photoshop
Logos created in Photoshop simply don’t scale well. If you enlarge them, they appear pixelated and unprofessional. Instead, use Illustrator and save the logo as an EPS or PDF file so you can enlarge it without losing any of the detail you’ve worked so hard on.
Conclusion
Take the time—or spend the money—to do your logo right the first time without cutting corners. In the long run, it will save you both time and money.
You’ve probably heard the saying “penny wise, pound foolish,” meaning that saving some money now can cost you a lot of money later. Avoid these beginner mistakes now, and you’ll save yourself a lot of headache and hassle later. Redesigning a logo is an arduous process and can cost you sales and brand recognition, too. And think about all the different places where your logo appears: your website, business cards, packaging, marketing materials, etc.
It’s so much more effective to take the time to design a professional, well-thought-out logo right from the beginning. That way, you can focus on other components of your brand and rest assured that you have a logo that looks great, resonates with your customers, and communicates your message.
Want to learn more?
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