As business competition gets tougher and new businesses get into the game, one of the major worries of startups after a brand name is a brand visual identity popularly referred to as a LOGO. The importance of a visual identity cannot be overlooked and undervalued. Logos are as important as the brand name. Let us do a quick practical: I will mention a few brands and you will calculate how long it took you to remember what the logo looks like and what came into your mind as you remembered the logo, okay, lets go!coca-cola, Samsung, Toyocnnhp,facebook, steem etc

In the Stone Age, symbols were used to communicate, send messages, ideas and thoughts because there was no written language back then and it is also possible that the verbal communication wasn’t also that effective and as such symbols were very important.
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In today’s world, symbols are still being used to communicate but this time with more details and more deliberately and are referred to as Logos. Logos are designed for recognition of organizations, businesses or groups, they are used to build a visual identity around these organizations.

A logo is simply a symbol, a sign or an emblem that conveys a message.
Logo is not a brand as most people mistake it to be, it is an element of a brand. A brand is so much more. A logo helps the market identify the brand, looking at a business logo triggers something in them that makes them think, about the business.
Being the visual identity for your business, it can make your business stand out and as such it should be carefully designed and should cover all the basis.
A logo is seen on multiple things: letterheads, business cards, souvenirs, advertisements, websites, vehicles, social media platforms etc. they are to be seen everywhere. This calls for logos to be flexible, recognizable and adaptable.

TYPES OF LOGOS

BASIC SYMBOL/ ICONIC LOGO:

This represents a brand in a simple, bold and confident manner, the image is in most cases abstract and they are mostly used by large brands that serve whole world. Large brands need their identity to be easily recognised by anyone and everyone because they tend to serve different people with different tastes, cultural differences, languages etc. so having a symbol or icon is ideal for example apple, shell, nike.source

WORD MARK:

This logo is made up of a word, here brands make their logos form the word in unique fonts that isn’t readily available anywhere for example cocacola, facebook, pintrest, fedex.

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LETTER MARK:

These are similar to the word mark but are shorter, they would generally use the initials of a company probably because the company’s name is really long or the name is difficult to pronounce examples are hp, ibm
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COMBINATION MARK:

This logo utilizes a wordmark and an icon/symbol in one, this way, you can have the best of both, either the symbol or the icon which is easily adaptable. You could use it for anything, signage, screens, digital,etc. This could be quite dangerous too if your brand or the logo has not been well marketed for it to be easily recognizable. Examples are adidas, Samsung
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EMBLEM:

This is quite similar to the combination mark, there is the name and then there is the design, in which the company’s name is fully encapsulated examples include starbucks,bmw
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ELEMENTS OF A GOOD LOGO

• SIMPLICITY:
  since a logo is the face of a company, it should be kept simple, this is actually harder than it looks but everyone needs to identify with it

• MEMORABILITY:
  anyone that glances at the logo the first, second or third time should be able to remember what it looks like and probably be able to sketch it.

• SUITABILITY:
  in most cases, logos are in most cases designed to meet the suitability of the business owners which is not supposed to be so, as a business owner, the logo isn’t for you but it is for target audience and as such, it should be designed to suit them. This calls for a need to study your customers, know what colours they like, where they hang out, then build a brand identity that specifically targets them. It is okay to want to reach out to as many audiences as possible but then being specific helps you achieve better success with those kind of people.
  If you create a logo just for you, it is going to appeal to only you and then it would not reach out your customers or target audience.

mistakes you shouldn't make

• DESIGNING LOGO AS A BITMAP:
  Designing your logo as a bitmap graphic would certainly look great and amazing as at the size you designed it but if you are to expand the logo and want to make it look bigger for a signage or bigger platform, it would lose its essence. Because on bitmaps, the bigger you expand, the lower the quality and the more pixelized and blurry it gets. Let your logo be designed as a vector graphic designed on an adobe illustrator or corel draw because you can always resize a vector graphic without it losing its quality.

• MAKING A LOGO DESIGN TOO COMPLEX:
  your logo should be as simple as simple could be without having too many details. A restaurant business logo shouldn’t necessarily have a cutlery embedded in it or a shopping business have a cart in its logo, or a skin beauty business necessarily have cosmetics embedded in its logo. Reflecting elements of a business on its logo makes it too complex and if you try to resize it smaller, it loses all of those details. So it is advisable to keep it simple for example Nike, Apple, pespi, adidas, shell etc. Try to define your brand identity to a simple form, then you could reserve those complex messaging and details explained through marketing. Your logo doesn’t have to say everything you do all in one place. Get something that is recognizable at sight then build around it.

• USING STOCK IMAGES:
  when designing logos, stay away from stock images and try as much as you can to build a logo from scratch so that you don’t end up using someone’s work that has been unauthorized for use and if you are not the designer, please also look out for this, be sure the logo being delivered to you is original.

• DIY LOGOS:
  if you need something designed, please use a professional who would make sure that what he give you is what your brand needs. Yeah, you have an idea of designing or you know how to do it, but when it comes to your brand, you might not have all it takes, you just need a professional.

After now, i bet you'll start paying a little more attention to logos, so how about the steemit logo?