Hiring a Professional Logo Designer

What makes a company stand out? Is it a unique product that no one else in the industry is selling? Is it dedication to providing round-the-clock customer service? Is it a history of contributing money to charity?

All of these are certainly true, but in a more basic sense, what makes a company stand out is simply its logo. For something that is essentially just a small illustration, it can exercise a remarkably powerful influence on consumers.

To illustrate, what is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Apple, Nike, or McDonald’s? Before you even start thinking about what these companies are about, your mind will conjure up an image of the half-eaten apple, the iconic ‘swoosh’, or the yellow ‘M’ against a red background. This is the power of the logo.

If you are a business owner yourself, coming up with a logo to represent your company should be one of your top priorities. And unless you are also a designer, it is advisable to leave the task of bringing your vision to life to a professional logo design company.

Doing this has several benefits over trying to create one on your own, or leaving the job to amateurs, and we will cover the most important ones in the rest of this article.

1. To Establish Your Brand Identity

Think of a company as an entity that has two key features. One is its internal structure, which is a kind of mechanism for producing wealth. The other is its outward appearance, the image it projects into the public sphere. The marketing discipline of branding is primarily concerned with the latter, namely with the process of forming and disseminating the company’s image. And a logo is a key element of this process. The purpose of a logo is to encapsulate your company’s brand identity into a simple, reproducible form, so it can be used as a visual shorthand for representing your company to clients and customers.

2. To Make Your Products And Services Recognizable

In a hypothetical world where marketing never took off as a commercial activity, there would be little means of distinguishing between various products and services that society produces. One can of tuna would look like any other, and consumers would have no means of telling them apart, even if they came from different factories. Now, imagine adding a logo of your favorite seafood brand to one of the cans. Suddenly, the can without a logo will look boring and nondescript, whereas the one with a logo will immediately jump out at you. The point should be obvious – having a logo is crucial to make customers notice your products and services.

3. To Set You Apart From Your Rivals

We will extend our example from the previous paragraph, and ask you to imagine that a competitor of yours now has their logo on the other can of tuna. We are now back to square one – the cans are indistinguishable insofar each of the has a logo plastered over it. This is where the element of competition comes into play. In order to make your can stand out, your logo has to be better at identifying your product than the one your competitor is using. And a professionally designed logo will always look better than a doodle by an amateur, so make sure that your company only uses the former.

4. To Build Trust With Consumers

A logo is not just an image. It is also a symbol, and symbols have meaning. Take the symbol of the cross. For a non-christian, a cross is just the intersection of two lines. For a believer, the cross represents the very core of their faith. A logo rarely inspires such adherence, but it will nonetheless communicate some sort of message to people that are aware of it. And the message your logo should be communicating is one of trust. And if your customers associate your logo with a sense of trustworthiness, they will be more willing to do business with your company.

5. To Communicate Complex Messages
Logos are used to build trust, but they can also transmit more specific messages. In this sense, a logo is a means of describing the thing it is associated with, whether it is your company as a whole, or a particular product or service your are offering. Take the famous Nike ‘swoosh’. For one of the most famous logos ever created, the ‘swoosh’ is rather minimalist in its design, but only on first glance. The ‘swoosh’ resembles a ‘tick’ used to mark the completion of a task, conjuring forth images of success. It also evokes a sense of motion due to the a variation in thickness, another idea which is in line with Nike’s brand identity.

6. To Enhance Your Aesthetics

While a logo is arguably the most prominent visual element of your company’s aesthetic, it is by no means the only one. Equally important are your choice of color, font, and website layout. The question then becomes: which element should you develop first? There is no one answer to this question, but we would like to argue that by opting to first design your logo, you will make it much easier for yourself to come up with the other two. Our reasoning is the following: a logo combines all three of the aforementioned aspects of your visual aesthetic in a neat little package. It has a specific color scheme, it often includes some form of writing, and it’s overall shape is a good starting point for developing the layout for a website.

7. To Create a Legacy

If you sit down and sift through a book on medieval illustration, you will find a lot of images that resemble logos of today. These so-called heraldic symbols were used to identify various institutions, guilds, and families. More importantly, a heraldic marking was a sign of legacy – it implied that whoever wore the mark came from a long line of descendants of good repute. And your company logo can also work in this fashion. Once your company gets established as a reputable name in your industry, its logo will slowly start accumulating value over time. Eventually, your logo might even outgrow your company, becoming a true symbol of its own.

Conclusion
As you can see, a professionally designed logo can bring substantial benefits to your company. Whether you are trying to differentiate yourself from competitors, raise brand awareness, or communicate more effectively with consumers, a logo can help you achieve these goals, all for the price of a single illustration.