How to Make Your Cosmetic Brand’s Logo Stand Out
When starting a cosmetic business, one of the first things you will decide is what will your logo be? This is the single image that is going to define your company. The image that, when people look at it, they will know belongs to your brand.
A good logo behind a good brand will help instill confidence in your audience. But, while many logos may seem simple, a lot of thought goes into them. Here is what you need to know when it comes to making the right logo for your brand.
Looking to get help with a logo design or cosmetic packaging? Even if you’re not a graphic artist, don’t let that hold you back. Our graphic artists will work with you to help you create exactly what your brand needs. Contact CJW Cosmetic today.
Why Do You Need A Logo?
Every company has a logo, but have you ever sat down and thought about what a logo does? When most people start out, they usually think they need a logo because everyone else has one.
But, there’s more to it than that!
A logo is going to be how you communicate what your business is about in one glance. If businesses were just names and no logos, we’d have pages of pure text to look through. That’d give us all a headache and give us no sense of direction on who would be best for us.
What Should a Logo Do?
Most people decide on the brands and websites they want to go to based on a good logo. If you don’t have a good logo, your potential audience base may think you don’t put enough time into your company and clients.
A logo can make or break your company before it even begins. Make sure that you don’t slap something together. Ensure your brand’s personality shines through to your audience. A good logo will have people interested in you before they even know what your company is about.
What Makes a Bad Logo?
In order to learn how to make a good logo, you must know what makes a bad logo. So to help out, we made the worst possible logo design we could think of.
Let’s talk about the first step: the color scheme. Neon green combined with bright yellow does not make something that is easy to read. Automatically, you don’t want to read it based on the simple reason that … well … you can’t.
Don’t make your audience work to read your logo.
The next thing you’ll notice is what’s going on with the text? The text is not only in wildly different colors but also in very different fonts. Yes, it is okay to use different fonts, but you need to make sure the changes are subtle and not jarring as above.
The last thing and probably the most obvious: this logo has way too much going on. There are pictures and graphics everywhere. More pictures will give you more attention, but not the attention you want.
A complicated logo is a bad one. Instead of enticing the audience to read more, you instead throw too much at them at once and turn them away completely.
What Makes a Good Logo?
So much can be learned how what makes a good logo from basic communication skills.
Everything we talked about previously regarding what makes a bad logo can also be applied to speaking. What do we mean? We break it down further below.
The First Step
When it comes to speaking, you need to make sure you’re adding value to the conversation.
The first thing you want to do is leave the logo in black and white. Why? Because your idea needs to be the first thing your logo communicates. The colors are just there to accentuate the idea and help diversify you from the crowd.
When it comes to designing your logo, the first step is making sure your logo is communicating the right idea.
Fun? Quirky? Serious? These are all ideas that well-placed text, fonts, and font sizes can express by themselves.
The idea doesn’t have to be anything too graphic design-heavy. It can be something as simple as the overall layout of the text. Maybe some words that are underlined. Play around with sizes and basic text options, like italics, and see what is best for your brand.
If you’re looking for the right font then take a look through Google’s font selections.
What you need to ask:
Is this easy to read?
Does it get our message across?
The Next Step of Choosing the Right Color
Loud colors = loud personality.
While people can have loud personalities and still be fun to be around, no one really enjoys obnoxious energy. You know this person, the kind that always needs attention, the one we’re all trying to get away from. Your choice in color needs to communicate in a way that doesn’t turn anybody off.
Whereas a good idea is going to get people thinking about your company, the right colors are going to really grab their attention.
We say choosing the right idea should come first because you want to ensure you say the right things when you got their attention. Now that you have the right idea, time to package it nicely in the best colors.
The colors you need to avoid are bright color combinations. This does not mean avoiding bright colors in general. When you think of your background and your text, bright on bright makes a mess that is hard to read.
So how should you combine colors?
There are many great tools out there for you to use. For simplicity, it's hard to beat Color Palette.
This tool automatically creates color combinations with whatever your first color choice is. You can add multiple colors as well.
However, limit your color choices to no more than 2.
It is possible to add 3 or more color options. If this is something you feel is important then consider hiring a graphic designer. For those reading this guide because you have no experience in design, then limit yourself to two colors to make it easier for yourself.
The Power of Simplicity
When we communicate, we don’t want to ramble.
We talked about the importance of simplicity when it comes to colors, but minimalism should be incorporated into every aspect of your logo when possible.
When it comes to making a logo stand out, colors and arrangement make a huge difference. That arrangement needs to be easy to understand at one glance.
The best part: you don’t even need to come up with a graphic to go alongside the name of your company. If you don’t want, that is.
A simple design can just be text. Take a look at Calvin Klein’s logo. It’s literally just the name of the company in black lettering. However, note the font. It’s bold and clean as if by being minimalist it is making a statement.
Nintendo’s logo is easy to recognize and is just the company name inside an oval. Its use of red markets the company as youthful. Meanwhile, the lettering sizes (such as the “t”) give it a playfulness.
Don’t worry about going for a big design for your logo. Less is more when it comes to logo design. Just make sure the few elements you do use are used tactfully.
Take the Viewer on a Journey
Alright, so this title is vague but something you should keep in mind when designing your logo. Make sure your design is in control of the viewer’s eyes and is moving them exactly where you want them to.
If you are doing the simple “graphic on the left, company name on the right” design then you shouldn’t worry about this too much. But you do want to consider that one does not take a significant amount of attention from the other.
However, if you are looking to have a little more fun or are using text alone, then there is some room to play with here.
To help your logo stand out, you can do multiple things.
Try playing with your negative space. Negative space is the space in your logo that does not have a font or picture. Look at how FedEx used its negative space to create an arrow between the “E” and the “x.”
Ideally, your logo should have viewers seeing each individual piece by guiding them from one thing to another.
Recap
From the outside, making a logo seems pretty simple. But that simplicity comes from knowing all the mechanics that make it work. When making a great logo for your cosmetics company, you have a lot of things to consider. Here’s a quick rundown:
No more than 2 colors
Make sure your colors contrast each other (i.e. no bright letters on bright backgrounds)
Make sure the design is simple
Your audience should see all of your logo
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Making a logo can be frustrating. After all, this is what will be not just on your business cards, but on your website and packaging as well. It needs to be perfect and get the right message across. The wrong logo can mean thousands of dollars wasted. However, CJW Cosmetic offers designs for branding that are catered directly to cosmetics! That means you’ll get a logo that stands out and not have to worry about sending the wrong message. Contact us today and see how you can get involved with our team of designers.
