A company can make a lasting first impression on potential customers just by having a smart brand name and logo. You aren’t going to find a business without these important aspects. But more importantly is having a name and logo that successfully represents your company and its visual identity. After all, these features should identify the key factors of your business that will separate you from the competition. By developing your brand and knowing what makes a successful visual identity, creating a brand name and logo doesn’t become a daunting task. Whether your business is young or already established, here are tips for creating a brand name and logo:

• Defining a brand
• Qualities of a great name and logo
• Brainstorming potential ideas
• Types of brand names and logos
• Adopting a brand name and logo

Defining a brand

Before striving to create a recognizable face of your company, there are two concepts to understand. What is at the core of your business and how should that be communicated. Getting to the core of your brand means evaluating the objectives and characteristics you’d like to highlight. Remember, a brand identity is all about conveying recognizable characteristics to market your business. Creating vision and mission statements are ways to understand what you want to accomplish and why. This determ

ines crucial attitudes, objectives, and perceptions from the public altogether, forming the foundation of a brand identity. 

Next is determining who your brand should appeal to. Who are your potential customers? An effective visual identity will create customer loyalty when the public has an image to embrace. But it’s likely that your objectives won’t appeal to everyone. There are many ways to break down the general public to find who would be most loyal to your brand. Consider traits of people that your product or service applies to and perceptions those groups hold toward certain ideas. It’s recommended to leave this sort of research and considerations to an expert on branding or marketing. 

Qualities of a great name and logo

It’s easy to recognize what an effective brand name and logo look like. But it’s harder to tell what makes them so effective. Here are five qualities of a strong brand name and logo:

• User-friendly: Creating a brand name and logo that is user-friendly means making things simple. Words/names that are easy to pronounce and to the point. Customers also should be able to remember and replicate a design from memory with ease. 
• Original: It may seem obvious, but it’s key to have an original visual identity. Names and logos should be distinct enough for them to not be confused for anything else. Being distinct also includes not fading into the background amongst the competition. 
• Positive: When someone encounters your company for the first time, they should only feel positive about your branding. That’s why it’s necessary to test if your name/logo could be negatively perceived. Even colors can evoke emotions to align with your brand values. 
• Consistent: A visual identity should be consistent with the values you want to represent. Also, it should be consistent between different marketing imagery. This way, consumers are able to become familiar with the brand’s visual identity. 
• Adaptable: At the same time, a name and logo should be adaptable enough for different materials. It should be understood from social media and on packaging. It should also be able to evolve for the future if necessary. 

Brainstorming potential ideas

Now’s the time to get out any ideas you have when creating a brand name and logo. The best way to get ideas for a brand name is to play out word associations. Here’s how to expand your reach of ideas. First have a team of people list a handful of adjectives that describe your products, services, or organization. For each adjective, list a few one-word concepts or nouns that come to mind. Then repeat the same steps with words that explain why your company does what it does. You should have dozens of words to put together for a brand name!

For organizing ideas of how to create a logo, a reliable method is making a mood board. It is an easy way to collect and put together inspiration from different sources. They can be digital or physical depending on your needs. Some ideas of what to compile in a mood board include color schemes, photo references, other logos, and art styles. While searching for other images you may find other concepts to inspire an original logo. 

Types of brand names and logos

There are a few different types of names and logos you can select to make them more unique. The most functional type of brand name is descriptive names, they exactly describe what a company does. Just watch out for these names being too restrictive to a brand or uncreative. The next type are invented names which can come from combining or inventing words to make something new. The last type we’ll mention are associative names which are words chosen to reflect the brand’s positioning like Amazon. 

Two of the most popular types of logos are wordmark and lettermark logos. These are logos that are reliant on a brand name or acronym and a distinctive typography. The next type is the pictorial logo which relies on a simple, emblematic design. Examples include the Apple logo or the Target bullseye. Similar to pictorials are abstract logos which are images that don’t already exist and can be up to interpretation. Then combining both a distinct name and a graphic image makes a combination style logo.

Adopting a brand name and logo

You may have some ideas now of what you want your brand name and logo to be. How can you ensure that your ideas will actually work? The first thing to ensure is the top names you created are available to use. An organization or website may have already taken the ideas you have. Next is to scope out competitor companies and check if their brand identities are too similar. If so, then it’s back to making choices for your brand to stand out. Once you are done creating a brand name and logo, there are steps to take for protecting it from competitors. If you don’t have a solid name and logo just yet, we recommend going to experts in branding and marketing.

Ready to dig deeper into your brand’s visual identity? Want expert marketing advice to see real progress? At Dock Line, we offer outstanding online marketing and graphic design services to develop your brand and get the attention of new customers. If you’re interested to learn more about Dock Line’s marketing services, contact us today to see how we can help grow your business!
Like this content and want more? Read more tips for local businesses here! And don’t forget to subscribe to Dock Line Magazine to get more content like this sent straight to your inbox and mailbox!