Last updated on Feb 18, 2024
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Define your problem
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Research your context
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Ideate your solutions
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Prototype your options
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Test your outcomes
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Implement your solution
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Here’s what else to consider
Your brand logo is more than just a visual representation of your business. It's a powerful tool to communicate your identity, values, and personality to your customers and stakeholders. But how can you create a logo that reflects your brand essence and stands out from the crowd? One way is to apply design thinking, a creative and human-centered approach to problem-solving, to your logo design process. In this article, we'll show you how design thinking can help you improve your brand logo in six steps.
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- Eric Marrero Director, Brand Marketing and Communications
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- Munzallin M. ACHEIVED 1M+ SALES | CHEIF BRANDING MARKETING OFFICER | HELPING BRANDS GO VIRAL | SOLOPRENEUR | BUSINESS EXCELLENCE |…
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1 Define your problem
The first step of design thinking is to define the problem you want to solve with your logo. What is the purpose of your logo? Who are your target audience and what are their needs, preferences, and emotions? How do you want them to perceive your brand? What are the key messages and values you want to convey? By answering these questions, you can create a clear and specific problem statement that guides your logo design.
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Design thinking enhances a brand logo by prioritizing user-centricity and meaningful storytelling. Begin by empathizing with the target audience to understand their preferences and values. Define the brand's core identity and values, ensuring they align with the audience's expectations. Ideate diverse logo concepts, encouraging creativity and innovation. Prototype and gather feedback iteratively, refining the design based on user responses. This iterative process ensures the logo resonates emotionally, creating a memorable and authentic brand connection. Ultimately, design thinking transforms a logo from a mere visual element to a powerful symbol that communicates the brand's essence, fostering long-term brand loyalty.
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- Munzallin M. ACHEIVED 1M+ SALES | CHEIF BRANDING MARKETING OFFICER | HELPING BRANDS GO VIRAL | SOLOPRENEUR | BUSINESS EXCELLENCE | ORGANIZATIONAL LEADERSHIP SPECIALIST
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Design thinking can enhance your brand logo by focusing on understanding your audience's needs, brainstorming creative ideas, and iterating through prototypes to ensure effectiveness. This approach fosters innovation, empathy, and problem-solving, resulting in a logo that resonates with your audience and effectively communicates your brand's values and identity.
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- Eric Marrero Director, Brand Marketing and Communications
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Design thinking is critical to ensure that the brand logo is not only visually appealing but also strategically aligned with the brand’s goals, values, and promise. And ultimately to creating a cohesive, impactful and memorable brand identity. But it also shouldn’t be looked upon as a once and done approach. The brand identity, like the brand strategy should be looked at as a living breathing thing and nurtured. It should evolve in line with the growth and evolution of your brand.
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- Humsi Singh LinkedIn Top Branding Voice | Adobe Creative Educator | Brand Marketing Manager at SAAR Technosoft
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Design thinking enhances a brand logo by infusing empathy, creativity, and functionality. Through empathetic understanding, we grasp audience needs, ensuring the logo resonates emotionally. Creativity shapes unique visual elements, fostering memorability and differentiation. Functionality ensures versatility across platforms, maintaining clarity and impact. Iterative processes refine the logo, aligning it with evolving brand narratives and audience perceptions. Ultimately, design thinking transforms a logo from a mere symbol to a powerful storyteller, forging deep connections and embodying the essence of the brand's identity.
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- Kashan Jabbar Digital Marketing Manager | Engaging Audiences in METAverse 🌐
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Identify it first if it is needed then execute according to your vision.Must be minimalistic. But not be mascot, if it’s not about gaming
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2 Research your context
The next step is to research your context, which includes your industry, market, competitors, and trends. You need to understand the current situation and challenges of your brand, as well as the opportunities and gaps that exist in your niche. You also need to analyze the logos of your competitors and other successful brands, and identify what works and what doesn't, what makes them unique and memorable, and what you can learn from them. By researching your context, you can gain insights and inspiration for your logo design.
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- Debashish Deb AGM Marketing @ Parakh Group | Driving Brand Success
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To improve your brand logo, undertake a thorough examination of your company's essential values and objectives, ensuring alignment with current design trends while distinguishing it from competitors by carefully evaluating industry commonalities. To avoid inadvertent misinterpretations, customize the logo to your target audience's preferences and behaviors, taking cultural aspects into account.
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Examine your company's core principles and goals in detail in order to make your brand logo better. Make sure your design adheres to current trends, but also set yourself apart from the competition by closely examining commonalities in the market. Make sure the logo is tailored to the tastes and habits of your target audience, taking cultural nuances into consideration, to prevent unintentional misinterpretations.
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- Sherwin Mascarenhas Marketing at BrewDog India
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Researching your context is a crucial step in the logo design process as it allows you to gain a comprehensive understanding of your industry, market dynamics, competitors, and prevailing trends. By delving into these aspects, you can uncover valuable insights that inform the creation of a logo that resonates with your target audience and effectively communicates your brand identity. Analyzing your competitors logo helps you make your brand stand-out in this highly competitive environment
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As my opinion to improve your brand logo start researching about your target audience and business background then select colours accordingly to business background. Because colors give a positive message to your target audience.Always use minimal style logo it's help you to create powerful image of your brand infront of your audiences.
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Your brand's logo should be relevant to your industry. Your logo mark is usually the first thing people notice about the brand, & they need to be able to perceive the brand purpose without reading more about your business. Context is important to get graphic designing right. Do not rush the process.
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3 Ideate your solutions
The third step is to ideate your solutions, which means generating as many ideas as possible for your logo design. You can use various brainstorming techniques, such as mind mapping, sketching, word association, or mood boards, to explore different concepts, styles, shapes, colors, fonts, and symbols for your logo. You can also involve your team, customers, or other stakeholders in the ideation process, and get feedback and suggestions from them. The goal is to be creative and divergent, and not to limit yourself by any constraints or assumptions.
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Research is imperative. The psychology of colors should be applied to your thinking. What emotions do certain colors evoke? Why are primary colors used in fast-food? Why is red used in particular? Which colors are you incorporating & why? If we know that blue is associated with ‘trust’ & purple is ‘the new pink’, then we must consider this as part of the exploration into color.Explore color combinations for inspiration - Which colors are trending in different niches?Who is your target demographic? What do your consumers think about certain colors?Should shifting color trends govern your unique brand?Does a particular color/hue better reflect your USP?These are the types of questions to consider prior to selecting a color palette.
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- Sherwin Mascarenhas Marketing at BrewDog India
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Ideas come in diverse shapes, sizes, and colors, emphasizing the importance of exploring various permutations and combinations that align with your design approach. Personally, utilizing tools like mind mapping or mood boards can help distinguish and organize the elements involved in your logo design process. In recent times, there has been a prevalent trend among brands to embrace a minimalist and aesthetic approach. This approach prioritizes simplicity, clean lines, and impactful visuals, reflecting a shift towards sleek and refined design choices.
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It has been said that if you sketch out 10 logo designs, walk away for 24 hours and then come back... at least one of them will be a winner.Or at least give you a starting point to work from.After you have done your research and thoroughly know the product or brand it will become clearer.Granted know that you still need to look for hidden meanings that others might see. If you have not seen videos of branding or logo mistakes on YouTube then you really need to look them up.
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- Drishti Mehra Digital Marketing Expert | Social Media Strategist | Graphic Designer | Video Editor | Creative Content Writer | Experienced Team Leader | Photographer | Videographer | Web Designer
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The ideation phase is where creativity flourishes. Brainstorm a wide range of ideas, exploring different concepts, styles, and visual elements. Encourage collaboration and diverse perspectives to generate innovative solutions that capture the essence of your brand. Remember, no idea is too outlandish during this phase.
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Design thinking helps you to mitigate on probable talking points of the brand such as Values, USP and stories!Keeping the above in mind if the logo shares all of it successfully in its design then the brand is able to convey its selling point even before a pitch happens - better begun is half done! ✔️
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4 Prototype your options
The fourth step is to prototype your options, which means creating low-fidelity versions of your logo ideas. You can use tools like Adobe Illustrator, Canva, or Logo Maker to turn your sketches into digital mockups, or use paper, scissors, and glue to make physical models. You don't need to worry about the details or the quality of your prototypes, as they are meant to be quick and rough experiments that you can test and improve later. The aim is to make your ideas tangible and visible, and to compare and evaluate them.
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One thing that is useful at this juncture, is to maintain a list of hex codes. If you’re an Apple customer, then use the color wheel and eye dropper to assist. Alternatively, use a color code and hex code generator. It’s so important to keep a record and a hex code is universal. Often graphic work using RGB vs CMYK only, presents differently later on. To avoid this, be sure you attribute a hex code to each hue. Your website should reflect your logo and color palette, which sometimes is unfortunately overlooked. People forget to consider how the fluorescent green will translate online. By creating a color code list, with relevant hex codes, you can ensure that all colors present correctly and uniformly, irrespective of the medium.
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- Sherwin Mascarenhas Marketing at BrewDog India
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The beauty of prototyping lies in its roughness – you need not worry about perfect details or high quality at this stage. Instead, focus on making your ideas tangible enough for comparison and evaluation. This process allows for experimentation and iteration, paving the way for refinement and improvement in later stages of the design journey.Creating digital mockups and renders of your final design during the prototyping stage has been incredibly beneficial for me. It allows you to visualize how your design will complement all your associated marketing materials, providing valuable insights into its overall impact and cohesiveness.
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- Drishti Mehra Digital Marketing Expert | Social Media Strategist | Graphic Designer | Video Editor | Creative Content Writer | Experienced Team Leader | Photographer | Videographer | Web Designer
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Prototyping allows you to transform your ideas into tangible designs. Create multiple iterations of your logo concepts, experimenting with typography, color schemes, and graphic elements. Use digital tools or sketching techniques to visualize your designs and refine them based on feedback and iteration.
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5 Test your outcomes
The fifth step is to test your outcomes, which means getting feedback and validation on your logo prototypes. You can test your logos with your target audience, customers, or other stakeholders, and ask them questions like: What do you think of this logo? What does it communicate to you? How does it make you feel? How does it fit with the brand? What do you like and dislike about it? How can it be improved? You can also test your logos in different contexts and scenarios, such as on a website, a business card, or a billboard, and see how they perform and impact your brand image. The goal is to collect data and evidence that can help you refine and optimize your logo design.
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- Sherwin Mascarenhas Marketing at BrewDog India
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Testing your logo prototypes is essential. This involves gathering feedback from your target audience and stakeholders, probing into emotions, recall value, and attraction. By placing the design in various contexts, you gauge its lasting appeal and identify areas for final tweaks and iterations before finalization.
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- Norberts Erts Global Product Marketing
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Looking from a startup POW, you're used to trying things out, failing, learning, and improving. Don't be shy to apply this to your logo design too. Don't be afraid to experiment with different designs, get feedback and refine. Your logo can evolve as your startup does. Ours (CakeHR) survived (or evolved through?) 4 different iterations over 8 years. It's best to do this while it’s still early; once you reach that enterprise milestone, making changes can become costly.
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If you’re ever ‘stuck’, return to the black & white version. Sometimes, colors can distract you from the message you’re trying to convey. The psychology of colors provides a far greater insight into the impact of selected colors. Test different hues & pay attention to people’s facial reactions. If your intention is to prompt them to do something, is your message clear?Often a simple change to font style & size can make an enormous difference, redirecting the eye.Are you using an icon in your logo design? Is this causing confusion?Peeling back the layers of the logo, will help you identify which elements might need to be re-examined.Creating various versions (web, print) will help contextualize the logo & reveal its effectiveness.
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- Drishti Mehra Digital Marketing Expert | Social Media Strategist | Graphic Designer | Video Editor | Creative Content Writer | Experienced Team Leader | Photographer | Videographer | Web Designer
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Testing your logo designs with your target audience is essential for ensuring their effectiveness. Gather feedback through focus groups, surveys, or A/B testing to evaluate how well each logo resonates with your audience. Pay attention to factors like brand recognition, clarity, and emotional appeal to refine your designs further.
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6 Implement your solution
The final step is to implement your solution, which means finalizing and launching your logo design. You can use the feedback and data you gathered from the testing phase to make the necessary changes and improvements to your logo, and to ensure that it meets your problem statement and your brand objectives. You can also create a logo style guide that defines the rules and guidelines for using your logo, such as the size, color, spacing, and placement, and that ensures the consistency and coherence of your logo across different platforms and channels. The aim is to deliver and deploy your logo design, and to monitor and measure its impact and results.
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- Sherwin Mascarenhas Marketing at BrewDog India
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Developing a logo style or brand guide is essential to ensure consistency across all platforms where the design is utilized. This guide outlines crucial elements such as size, color, and font variations, allowing for standardization and easy monitoring of the logo's impact. By adhering to these guidelines, you can maintain a cohesive brand image and effectively measure its impact across different collaterals.
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- Drishti Mehra Digital Marketing Expert | Social Media Strategist | Graphic Designer | Video Editor | Creative Content Writer | Experienced Team Leader | Photographer | Videographer | Web Designer
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Once you've finalized your logo design, it's time to implement it across your brand's touchpoints. Ensure consistency in its application across marketing materials, digital platforms, and physical assets. Consider creating brand guidelines to provide clear instructions on logo usage, maintaining visual integrity, and reinforcing brand identity.
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Guia de estilo do logótipo: Criar um guia de estilo do logótipo é crucial para garantir consistência e coerência na utilização do logótipo em diferentes contextos e plataformas. Este guia estabelece regras claras sobre o tamanho, cor, espaçamento e posicionamento do logótipo, garantindo uma apresentação uniforme e profissional em todas as aplicações.Entrega e implementação: Após a finalização do design e a criação do guia de estilo, o logótipo está pronto para ser entregue e implementado em diversos materiais e canais de comunicação da marca. Isso inclui desde produtos impressos até plataformas digitais, assegurando uma presença consistente e reconhecível da marca.
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7 Here’s what else to consider
This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?
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- Gary J. Nix thinker. quantum strategist. culture structurer. previously R/GA, Condé Nast, Nike | brand/marketing strategy executive + consultant. prof. speaker. system builder for businesses. the original twitter voice.
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Begin by remembering the fact that once you have a business, your are now in the service industry. Your product or service exists to serve your consumers. That means what you're "selling" a solution.In addition, your visual identity should represent an amalgam of who you are, why you exist, and how you serve. Your logo should get those points whether blatant or indirectly.Design thinking is based on boring human-centric solutions. Thus, basing your design on that perspective places you directly in the position to being the solution to your consumers' needs.Straight math.
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- Sayan Mukherjee Chief Business Officer @ League Sports Co | Builder | Econ | Musician | Strategist | Optimist |
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Design thinking is a creative problem-solving approach that can help improve a brand logo by following these steps:Empathize: Understand the needs, preferences, and emotions of the target audience for the brand.Define: Identify the core message, values, and identity of the brand that the logo should convey.Ideate: Generate multiple possible logo concepts that reflect the brand’s essence and appeal to the audience.Prototype: Create low-fidelity versions of the logo concepts and test them with potential users and stakeholders.Test: Gather feedback and evaluate the effectiveness of the logo prototypes. Iterate and refine the logo design based on the results.
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- Brigid M.
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Your brand is your voice. What worked then may not work now. What works now, may not work next year. In an ever evolving landscape of business, technology, changing consumer needs and expectations; your brand is not static. It must continue to grow & evolve to connect and resonate with your target audience. Continuous research on industry trends and listening to customer feedback- you can anticipate shifts and adjust accordingly. Embrace experimenting and change.
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- Rudra Pratap Singh Digital Marketing | E-commerce Marketing | Google Ads
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In my experience, any type of design thinking should include future thoughts. Your logo is not something you change every year. Hence, it should be relevant not only today but also in the coming years. Your design thinking should reflect what your brand is today and at the same time what it can be tomorrow. Change is constant, so there is no doubt your business is not. However, if you have spent millions of dollars in creating a brand image, it is highly unlikely that you are willing to alter your brand logo. To avoid this dilemma, keep your thinking futuristic and at the same time associate it with today's needs.
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- Anjali Kumari Marketing at NextLevel by Unacademy | Influencer Marketing Specialist
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A logo that truly reflects your brand identity and resonates with your audience.Increased brand awareness and recall.Stronger emotional connection with your customers.Improved brand differentiation in the market.A more effective communication tool for your brand message.Remember: Design thinking is not just about creating a visually appealing logo, but about creating a meaningful symbol that embodies your brand and connects with your audience on a deeper level.
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