5 Questions to Ask Before You Start Your Logo Design Project

There are many ways to come up with logo design ideas, but all of those creative concepts won’t help your business if they’re not right for your brand and target audience. Just because a logo looks unique or cool doesn’t mean it’s the best choice for your business.

Before you begin any logo design project, you need to ask yourself a series of questions that will help you set your goals for your brand identity and the strategic direction for your logo design. Five of the most important questions are listed below. Don’t move forward with any logo designs until you answer each question honestly.

1. What is the name of the product, service, or brand that the logo design will represent?
You need to determine how the name of your product, service, or brand will be used in the logo. For example, a company might be incorporated but chooses to leave the “Inc.” out of its logo. A clothing brand might be trademarked as “ABC Jeans” but opts to create a logo that omits “Jeans” from the design. Make a decision on the name before you do anything else.

2. Will the logo include a tagline?
Many logo designs include a company, product, or service slogan. Decide if you want to use a tagline and whether it should be part of your logo design or not.

3. What is the brand promise that the logo should communicate?
The logo should help to create perceptions and set expectations for consumers’ experiences with the brand when they buy it. Therefore, you need to know what that promise is before you develop a logo design to reflect it.

4. Who are your primary and secondary audiences?
Your target audience is most important, but you don’t want to create a logo design that alienates your secondary and tertiary audiences. Consider the bigger picture in terms of who your logo needs to appeal to before you start putting together a list of logo design ideas.

5. What are your future growth plans?
Define your long-term stretch goals and use those to set the strategic direction of your logo design. Once your logo is finalized, it can be very expensive to change it and reprint everything that has your logo on it, including letterhead, business cards, signage, ads, websites, and so on. The last thing you want is to create a logo design that’s inappropriate a year later.