Unlike other industries, branding needs for contractors are slightly different. The contractors are faced with the task of passing across the message that they are ready for the next assignment while at the same time distinguishing themselves from the hundreds of similar contractors competing for the same jobs. Additionally, contractors who are still new in the industry face a massive task of getting established.

However, it is important to remember that confidence is grounded in the image. Through the creation of a solid logo, a contractor can create the perception of trust and start to win the hearts of potential clients, and by doing so, the business will be well on its way to growth. Below are some tips any contractor can use to create a logo guaranteed to stand out from the crowd and bring them immense marketing and branding success.

Use symbols associated with the trade

Proper use of symbols is imperative in the design of logos across all the industries. For contractors, appropriate choice of symbols is needed depending on the specific industry being plied. By using images relevant to the industry, it becomes easy to tell the potential clients about the kinds of services offered and they won’t have to struggle to figure out what the business is all about. As a general rule, the images must be simple and clear to understand and preferably, a single dormant image or text should be used. No need to cram three or four images in one logo.

Be niche specific

In as much as you may be one out of a thousand contractors in your niche, you may be providing an add-on service not being offered by most of the other contractors, thus differentiating your from them. For instance, you could be offering more personalized service, 24/7 emergency services, or competitive pricing amongst others. These extra services have the ability to create a huge difference in the client’s perception and so they should be clearly indicated in the logo. They will act as the strong selling points you will use to attract most of the clients interested in your services.

Stick to the colors defined by your trade

Just as with every other logo design, the psychology of color must be considered keenly when creating a contractor logo. Due to the extensive nature of the contractor businesses, there is a wide variety of colors to choose from, and any color chosen must be in tandem to the trade offered. It has been realized that most of the best performing contractor companies prefer to use bold colors such as brown, black, yellow, orange and red in their logos.

These colors are not only bright and conspicuous, but according to color psychology, they represent safety, trust, friendliness and professionalism – great attributes highly admired in most contractors. For contractors offering services related to the environment, there is a general trend to adopt blue and green colors in their logos as these seem to be more fitting for such services.

Let the logo deliver the marketing message effectively

Due to the high competition faced by the contractors, the winning logo must have the ability to pass across a strong marketing message which the potential clients will relate to by just taking a glance at the logo. Out of the marketing message, you can demonstrate trust, expertise and credibility to make people believe in you. The best way to do this when creating a contractor’s logo is to use a powerful slogan or tagline and position it conspicuously on the logo so that it is easily visible.

Consider the right choice of fonts

If your logo is not decipherable, then people will have to strain when trying to read it. For contractors, this might sound the death knell for the business since no one will be attracted to it. The solution to this however, is to use the right fonts that will guarantee readability. The preferred fonts for creating logos for contractors include Eras, Cambria and Gill Sans. It is also preferred that they should be set in bold typeface to create a commanding presence. Additionally, it is recommended that you combine graphics and type by doing away with letters in the company name and include relevant tools used in the industry.

When used correctly, the above tips will make every contractor come up with a winning logo that will make them stand out from the crowd and get the right kinds of customers needed to grow their businesses.

Learn how to build a logo for a used car dealership here!

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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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However, many entrepreneurs normally freak out when they hear about personal branding. They think that it is more complicated than rocket science and that it’s something that requires time and a lot of resources to achieve. Whereas it may take a considerable time to establish a personal brand, it is very much achievable and you don’t need to have a lot of resources to do so.

Presented here are a few tips to help entrepreneurs succeed with personal branding.

You are already developing it

If you are in an entrepreneur in any form of business, and you are interacting with clients or customers, you are already working on your personal branding only that you may not be aware of it. When your clients and customers interact and engage you on a number of issues, they are developing a perception and an image which they will associate with you and your products or services. Therefore, right at this moment, you are already branding yourself, but you now need to have the realization so that you can do it in the right manner.

Define your brand

You can’t build something which you have no idea about. When it comes to building a personal brand, it should be crystal clear to you what exactly you are looking forward to achieve. Remember you are already in the process of marketing yourself but you now need to know the things that set you apart from the rest so that you can capitalize on them. Defining your brand will imply that you understand yourself and have a thorough comprehension of your strengths and weaknesses so that you can continue to build upon them.

Be authentic

Without authenticity, you will never manage to establish a long lasting personal brand. Your personal brand should be a true reflection of who you are. It should reflect on your beliefs, your strengths as well as your weaknesses. Some people are fond of saying that you can fake it till you make it, but the problem with this is that you can’t be someone else when you are trying to build a personal brand. Therefore, simply be who you are and never try to mask anything. One the day the mask will fall off and you shall have wasted valuable time and resources which you might have used in building a personal brand in the right manner.

Become the best in your field

When you can prove to the people that you are among the top performers in the industry, it is very easy to gain their trust and this will be instrumental for personal branding. It is important for you to become the go to guy when people have problems and are in need of solutions in your industry. Strive therefore to increase your competency and credibility in your industry. If necessary, get more certifications and courses that will make you more knowledgeable and experienced in your field. Developing the skills you need to make your trade won’t just increase your proficiency but also make the process of building your personal brand a breeze.

Use memorable visual hooks

A personal brand doesn’t imply that it must have everything to do with your personality or image. As a matter of fact, the brand should outlive you. It calls for the use of memorable visual hooks that will make people think about you and your brand each time they see them. You may want to consider designing a logo amongst other materials to help you project the right image for your personal brand.

However, this might depend on the specific industry you are serving. For instance, if you are a motivational speaker in the personal development niche, you may want to consider using a professional image of yourself rather than having a logo as your graphical identity. This won’t be the case if you are trying to build a personal brand around a product or a service.

Make use of the internet

The internet, especially the social media has opened a forum for entrepreneurs to engage with their potential customers in manner that was not possible a few years ago. For personal branding, you can make strategic use of the social media to connect with your audiences and use the platforms in projecting the right image you want them to have about you. You can also share with them useful insights or help them find solutions to some of their most pressing needs so that you can come out as a responsible and authority figure which they can trust.

Learn how to create an excellent cover letter as a graphic designer here!

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But amidst the current information overload and the superfluity of design methods and techniques, how can you maintain your focus and become a better designer? The tips highlighted below will give you useful insights on how you can achieve this-:

Learn a new skill or technique

The design industry is such a robust and dynamic field with lots of skills and techniques coming up on a regular basis. Without learning about the new skills and techniques, you will be restricted to using the old methods and these might limit your levels of creativity as well as your ability to become more productive. The new tools and techniques are adopted so that designers can have the ability to produce high quality outputs within reasonable amounts of time.

Therefore, the first secret to being a better designer is to ensure that you can deploy various skills and techniques in your designs. In this manner, you will always have a tool or technique for each project and this will make your life much easier as a designer.

The beauty about learning a new skill or technique in design is that there are various ways you can do it at the present times. You can decide to go back to college or take advantage of the internet and attend one of the many design classes online. Besides, the internet also has lots of resources at your disposal which you can use for free to add new techniques and skill sets to your design toolbox.

Become proficient in how to use the grid

One of the most difficult and excruciating tasks is building the right layout for designs, whether for web or print. The use of grid provides an instant solution to this problem. It is, however, regrettable to see the number of designers who are pathetic when it comes to the use of grids. Unless you can have the right layouts, there is no way you will ever manage to come up with great designs.

It, therefore, goes without saying that if you want to become a better designer, it is imperative that you become proficient in the use of the grid. You should have in mind that using the grid in design is a skill that can be gained through constant practice. Therefore, dedicate some time and increase your practice on using the grid and once you learn the skill, coming up with layouts will always be a breeze to you, and this will enhance your proficiency as a designer.

Take advantage of technology for better font choices

Font choice is an import aspect of every design project. This is because the type of font you choose will not just dictate the choice of other design elements but also will tell whether your design will be a miss or a hit.

Most people have font libraries within their computers, and these are the ones they turn to whenever they are working on a new project. Whereas it is a good idea to have such a library handy for your use, it is pretty limiting given that there are more fonts you can access to increase your variety.

To become a better designer, therefore, make good use of technology to help you find the better fonts for your designs. For instance, you can use tools like Myfonts.com to help you figure out the most appropriate fonts to use in your designs. Such tools won’t just save you the time, but will increase your chances of getting the fonts right in most of the cases thus making you have better and high quality designs.

Strive to make your designs tells a story

To become a better designer, you must learn to create designs that are less decoration but more communication. A designer can only become great when they can create designs that will send specific messages and get a point across rather than create nice looking graphics. For you to become a better designer and have the versatility to create designs that will tell stories, you have to practice and be willing to learn.

A good place to understand how you can apply these in your designs is to study various advertising techniques. In this way, you will learn how to use metaphors, analogies as well as other creative tools that will give you the power to come up with convincing and persuasive designs.

Check out these hilarious logo fails!

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However, there are certain instances when the designer can really get mad. In most cases, it happens when they get a feeling that their intelligence in graphics design has been insulted or if the client if being unnecessarily stubborn. Here are some of the ways by which a client can really annoy their graphic designers-:

Ask them to work for free

The fastest and the easiest way a client can get their designers mad is to ask them to work for free with the promise of a positive review or helping them build their portfolio. This is not just derogatory but also insulting. The designer has taken his time and resources to learn his trade with the main reason of using the skills for financial gains and here you are asking for free services! However new or inexperienced the designer might appear, their intention is to give the client value for their money, and they will always be mad if you ask for free services.

Compare them with other designers

This is a complete turn off for many designers and if you ever try to compare them to other designers, they are likely to reject your offer. It is a fact that there are millions of other designers in the world, and you need to understand that each one is unique regarding quality and pricing amongst other attributes. Before you tell a designer about others offering $5 services on the internet or producing ten logos in one day, take a moment and look at their portfolio because you annoy them with such comparisons.

Haggle Forever

It is okay for a client to haggle so that they can services at rates which they can comfortably afford. However, haggling is only allowed at the beginning of the project. Once the designer has completed your work, you should know that you will be getting what you had paid for. Certain clients are fond of haggling even when the project has commenced and the designer is already deep in the design. Understand that the design industry is a creative market and not some fish market where you can haggle and make changes as much as you want.

Ask them to edit flat files

This usually arises from the client’s ignorance of the various files formats with regards to the ones which can be edited and the ones which are not editable. Most of the flat files are not editable so don’t send them over to your designer and ask them to edit them. The way to avoid annoying your graphic designer in this manner is to send original files with the editable layers. Most of the final artworks will be saved in PDF, some of which are editable but most of them can’t be edited. JPEGS and PNG files are also not editable.

Send them low-resolution images

In most of the graphic design assignments, the graphic designer may need to scale images and it is very difficult to do so without compromising on the sharpness of the image. To avert this, it is imperative to use high-resolution images. However, most clients send their graphic designers images in word formats or ask them to download from websites on the internet.

This is annoying because the customer may to ask that the logo be made bigger, yet the image sent can’t allow for that. Due to this, the designers are usually very mad when they receive low-resolution images from you, yet you will expect high quality work from them.

Ask them to make the logo bigger

Related to the above, a graphic designer does not like hearing the clients asking them to make the logo bigger. It is important to understand that the logo is part of the artwork and the whitespace at times may be a deliberate move by the designer to give the design some breathing space. Therefore, asking the designer to make the logo bigger is like guiding them on how to do the design yet they are the professionals. They find this to be demeaning to them, and most of them will get mad.

Expect unlimited revisions

The other way to annoy your graphic designer is to expect that they will offer you unlimited revisions. Before every project, there is a brief. The designer uses the brief to quote the project and give timelines depending on how long the project would take. Once you mutually agree on the terms of the project, how then can you expect unlimited revisions, unless you want to annoy the designer?

Use these 10 tips for better logo designs!

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Logo design is a skill and profession just like any other career out there. Every designer aspires to use their skills to grow as professionals and also as a source of income. The choice to give away logo for free or offer free logo design services is thus a prerogative of the service provider, in which case, it should never happen. The following are some of the reasons to discourage all graphic designers from giving away logos for free-:

It takes work to design a logo

Even though there are plenty of free logo design tools that can be used to create good looking logos within minutes, it takes more than tools for the creation of stellar logos. A considerable amount of time is expended in planning on how to create a versatile logo that will attract the attention of the target audience. And since time is money, giving away logo for free is just like giving away money or throwing your valuable time to the drains. You should therefore never think about free logo design.

You went to school to become a professional graphic designer

It is true that there are self-taught graphic designers, but this is just an exception and not the rule. Most of the professional designers attended some training or schooling to learn how to design professional logos. Such training definitely cost some money, commitment, and time. Hence, there is no logical reason to undergo all that only to come and give free logo designs. You shall have wasted your time and undermined the sacrifices you made to become a graphics designer.

The equipment and software used don’t come for free

The tools of the trade in logo design are not available for free. You need a computer and various software to make professional logos. You will have to spend money to acquire all these. Even if you rely on free tools from the Internet, you will still need resources to access the internet connection, and these will cost you money. Why, therefore, should you think about free logo design services?

Designing a professional logo is not a child’s play

The process of designing a professional logo takes time and a great deal of creative imagination. You need to think about the colors, fonts, target audience, images, etc. then bring them together to form a design. It is a skill that is continuously improved, and not everyone can comprehend and learn how to make professional logos. Footballers, athletes, doctors, Engineers are all paid for their skills, why should a graphic designer give away a logo for free?

You need to be paid for your experience

Perhaps you can give away a logo for free when you are still an amateur trying to attract clients and get their feet wet with graphics design. But for the seasoned professional, you have spent thousands of hours practicing and mastering your craft until now you can be called a professionals. It not that you started to design logos yesterday so that you give free logo designs. If every professional is paid for their experience, why is a graphics designer specializing in logos not compensated commensurately?

Success in your business will build on the logo

The logo is one of the most powerful marketing arsenals any business can have. Every success you get will be due to effective branding and marketing, of which the logo will play an instrumental role. Due to this, does it make any sense to offer logo design when it has the potential to take the business or the organization to greater heights of success?

Your logo will be there for many years

As the business grows, so does the brand, hence the logo. It implies that your logo will not be in use for just a short period, unless you are thinking of rebranding too soon. It will be there for as long as the business is in operation, continuing to sell your brand to all that sees it. Due to this, offering logo design services will be unfair since it will be beneficial to the business for many more years to come, yet you give it away from nothing.

However, there are certain cases when a designer might be tempted to offer free logo design services. For instance, when you are new in the market, and you are trying to build your portfolio, you can use free logo design as a low hanging fruit to win first customers and build your portfolio. Additionally, you can give free logo design services as an incentive to clients who purchase other graphic design services from you. Also, you can give away a logo for free is you decide to give back to the society by designing a professional logo to help a charity in furthering their course. However, you should never give away a logo for free.

Use this previous article to learn more about protecting the work you produce!

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