This might seem like an arduous task in the beginning, but with practice and experience, you will be able to understand your client’s businesses well so that you come up with great designs to demonstrate their vision to their clients. Presented here are some of the pertinent questions you need to ask yourself as a designer to help you bring out the client’s vision in your design.

What is the most suitable logo type to use?

There are different types of logos in use today and each will be suitable for various kinds of businesses. A good understanding of your client’s business vision will help you choose on the right type of logo to design and which will help the business in portraying their to present as well as potential clients. The following are some of the common logo types you will find yourself working with most of the times-:

Woodmarks logos – these are free standing logos featuring multi-letter abbreviations like the logo for CNN, IBM, Google, eBay etc.

Letterform Logos – these logos use a single letter as in the case of Honda, Uber, MacDonald’s and Unilever.

Pictorial Logos – pictoral logos are illustrated using common symbols such as the logos for Twitter, Starbucks, and Playboy amongst others.

Abstract Logos – these logos don’t represent anything which would otherwise be recognizable. A good example of an abstract logo is Nike’s swoosh.

The choice of the specific logo type to use in designing the client’s logo will depend on factors such as the length of the company name as well as if there is a common symbol that the company would like to be associated with. In some cases, you may blend the two or more logo types to come up with a hybrid logo depicting multiple logo types.

What are the key points about the business that the logo should present?

In order to fully comprehend the vision of your client and bring it out in the logo design, it is imperative that you get to know the key selling points that the business have. These should be those specific things setting the business apart from the competition and which they will use to attract more customers.

The knowledge about the key points about the business will then form your decision on some of the logo design elements so that you make designs which will cover the key selling points. This knowledge will ultimately dictate the choice of colors, the symbols, the shapes, the type as well as the orientation of the entire design.

What are the goals of the business?

Equally important as knowing the strength of the business is the goals of the business. By understanding the goals of the business, you will be in a better position as a designer to know what exactly the business aims to achieve and also the kind of branding approach they are likely to consider.

This will give you the ability to design a logo to communicate the goals of the business to the clients and help in convincing the clients that the company has the solutions they want. Without knowing the goals of the business, the design will be blind and without any objectives hence totally useless to the business.

Where is the client’s industry headed?

By knowing the general direction of your client’s industry, you will make better decisions on the kind of approach to adopt when signing the logo. The reason for knowing about the trend is that you design a logo that will be dynamic enough to retain its relevance even if the industry has moved on a decade from the time you did the design. But while designing the logo, be careful not to base the design on the logo design trends. This might render the logo redundant once the trend has passed.

What is the client’s range of products or services?

Knowing the range of the products or services offered by the client will also help you understand their vision and design a more appropriate logo. For instance, if they are dealing with one product line, you will have a different logo compared to when they are dealing with different product lines or they have operations in multiple industries. You can simply ask them about their product lines and possibly if they intend to diversify in the future so that you make the logo to have such dynamism in line with the client’s vision.

Check out these top 5 luxury brands!

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The use of negative space in design is important in creating a balance aimed at giving a clear, concise and compelling message. Just like when sketching a portrait, you will try to keep all the ratios intact to prevent the image from looking alien by using shapes to align the elements, besides keeping the dimensions of the original piece intact. In some cases, you may find yourself using negative space to enhance the visual, thus giving a superior definition to the design.

In every design you will ever come up with, negative space in design will always be used to define your illustration. And if you understand how you can use it in the right way, then you will have the ability to create another layer of meaning to your designs.

How the mind treats negative spaces in design

There are two distinct approaches the brain uses to analyze negative space. The first approach is that the brain will register the empty space in the design. You may try as much as possible to ignore it, but it will spring back in front of your eyes so that you recognize it properly.

Secondly, the brain offers a very strong impact on empty space more than how it recognizes it. You may not make meaning of the negative space immediately, but your subconscious mind will get to work and give meaning immediately to what you are seeing. Due to this, strategic use of negative space in design has always proven to be a winner in the success of the concerned graphics.

Getting the most of the negative space in design

Evidently, the use of negative space in design is such a crucial knowledge every designer ought to have as part of their design arsenals. You won’t just benefit by displaying high quality and prolific designs, but also, your work will attract the attention of the target audience leading to success for your clients. Below are five tips you can use to get the most from the use of negative space in design. Constant practice is, however, important for you to gain proficiency and be more comfortable in applying this design concept.

Envision the negative space

Before you use negative space in your design work, you must be in a position to envision it in the particular design you are working on. You must try and see the negative space just as clearly as you see the positive space so that you understand the kind of impact it will have on your design. This might require some practice, but you will find it simple once you start to compare the negative and the positive spaces together.

Know when enough is enough

The next thing in using negative space in design is to be able to tell when enough is enough. You must be careful on how you manage the negative space on the canvas lest it ends up ruining your whole design. Besides, there are no clear guidelines on the proper use of negative space in design, and this leaves you on your own to manage everything without losing the design. As a guide, you can use some of the great designs with negative space to get an idea on how to manage yours when designing. Always remember that too much space can be distracting just as too little space, and it is your duty to strike a balance and find something that works well.

Explore different ways to use negative space

There are myriad ways to use this concept in design in an effective manner. For instance, you can distribute it equally across the canvas only that placing the object at the center of the design is sometimes considered less attractive. This is because the viewer expects the object to be at the center and to put it there doesn’t give the reader a chance to make an effort at reading the message. But when you place the object on the sides then surround it with ample empty space, you shall have created high interest and engagement area for the reader.

Negatives spaces don’t have to be blank stretches all the time

As a designer, you have the liberty to introduce shapes and designs on the empty spaces instead of leaving them blank all the times. This is especially important when you want to use negative space in design where multiple messages need to be conveyed.

Use negative spaces to highlight parts of the main images

One of the rampant uses of this concept in design is to highlight an important part of an object or image. In this manner, the negative space will be used to draw the viewers attention to an important section of the design. This has proven to give stellar results in layouts or similar designs where user interaction is needed, or the viewer is required to perform a given task such clicking a button or another link.

For future reading on creating flat minimalist designs check out this post!

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How do you choose the best logo colors? While a startup company can provide a vast amount of value to its marketplace as well as deliver innovative solutions to its target market in order to maximize the impact that it is able to be made with its logo many elements need to be considered. Choosing the right color combination in any logo is just as essential as choosing the right graphic or the right text style. If a color scheme is offputting, unprofessional and unrelated to the content in the logo design it could easily lead to a company being passed up or having the target audience search for a new option. Here’s some of the top tips for choosing the right color combination for any logo design.

1. Understand your target audience:

Choosing the best logo color combinations for your brand is extremely important and choosing your color scheme for your own style habits is a fatal mistake. Choose the main color to resonate with your main target audience. Pick bolder colors for younger individuals or a softer color palette if you are trying to make an impact with a demographic like young mothers. Consider the emotions that each of the colors potentially signify in individuals and select colors based off of the feelings that they elicit. Colors should also at least match well together and by putting together several different colors you would like to use for your logo into a color swatch you can help to position them differently in your logo design. While it’s not a good idea to fully copy a competitor you could look into other businesses in your industry and capture a large swatch of some of the colors and basic schemes that they use to better understand the colors that are commonly used to appeal to your target audience.

2. Use the right ratio for your color scheme:

One of the most commonly used ratios in a color combination in a typical best logo colors is the 60%, 30%, 10% rule. Most common logos are made up of three different colors that make up other branding material. Designers will often pick one strong color that is used for at least 60% of the logo design. The second color will then complement the first selection and be represented in around 30% of the design. The third color is represented by just the smallest margin of a logo and usually just in 10% of the total color in a logo design. Make sure that you are extremely sure of the primary color as this will make up the majority of your logo design. After you have established some complementary colors for your logo design you can mix and match what you will use for the 30 and the 10. Laying out color schemes with 4-5 choices will help you to try several different designs in color schemes that would work well for reaching out to your audience.

3. Look into psychological meanings:

The best logo colors can have a huge effect on us psychologically. When it comes to the types of feelings that you would like your logo to convey in other people it’s important that you place an emphasis on the psychological feelings that each of the colors in your logo bring to people. While colors like blue have a calming and peaceful psychological effect that would be perfect for an environmental company or yoga wear company, if you are interested in high impact excitement you could use colors like Red and white to wake people up and really get them to notice your logo design. Think of how various colors make you feel and don’t be afraid to look into some of the main psychological responses to best logo colors and how the color schemes that you land on might help you to convey a secondary meaning or feeling from your logo.

4. Be logo unique:

While primary colors are an excellent way to get started with the creation of your color scheme, it’s important to be unique. Having your own special shade or at least colors that are slightly different from your competition can help you differentiate yourself in the marketplace. Having some type of unique color scheme for your business can make your brand even more recognizable. It may take some time to find a color scheme that works well for you that’s completely unique but with your own iconic colors people may only need to see a color swatch to associate a color with your business.

5. Think of natural inspirations:

While it’s important that a business color scheme elicits a certain response, its also possible to draw inspiration from a corporate environment or even the area around the business. We start to associate a number of different colors with the time of year like fall colors or spring colors. You may even want to take natural inspiration from various colors in your business. For example, if you are a brewer one of the most obvious colors that you could pick would be some of the colors from your beer products. If you have a particular shade of ale or lager for example you could incorporate this natural color into your branding.

Use these top five tips for choosing the correct color combination. Don’t forget to check out our Top 5 questions you should ask clients starting a logo design project as well, to see how you can improve the flow of your design project.

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