Did you happen to see the first episode of The Apprentice last week? For those of you who didn’t, there was a task set for the candidates to create a marketing campaign for a new cruise line. A huge part of that task was to create a brand for this company - queue the design work!

The most important message we gained from watching was how crucial a strong brand is and at the core of that is a solid logo design that speaks for itself and conveys the overall brand identity. 

In order to succeed in developing a strong logo, we feel there are a few elements to consider and take some time thinking about. The more ideas you have when you start designing your own logo, or begin conversations with a designer or the likes of ourselves here at Purple, the better the initial concepts will be. 

Here are the 5 aspects we think you should think about when brainstorming your logo

Brand Identity

A good place to start when creating a logo is making sure you have given thought to your overall brand identity. This can seem quite daunting at first but we hope that the following questions will help you start to build a clear picture of who you and your business are. 

Ask yourself these questions:

• Why did you start the business? 
• What are your core beliefs and values?
• What makes your business unique?
• What 3 words would you use to describe your business?
• How would you like your customers to describe your business?

When you begin to ask yourself these questions, you may start to visualise various elements that you think are important in expressing your business. These elements might be colours, shapes, style or specific fonts too. All the things we’re about to touch on as they are integral parts of building a successful logo design. 

Colours 

Colours are extremely important and in some instances the colour for your brand is a no brainer, but not in all cases. It may interest you to know that there is psychology behind colour and each colour has a different meaning and feeling associated with it. If you would like your brand to identify with certain ideologies, it may be worth looking at the psychology behind colours. 

We often use a great tool provided by Canva. Follow this link to discover the meaning of your brand colour.

Shapes

Shapes are equally important to think about. When you think about your business, do you visualise clean, sharp straight edges, like a square or triangle; or perhaps you picture more soft, round, fluid lines. These two approaches can create very different results so can be pivotal in your decision making.