A logo is essential for branding and marketing. If you have held off on creating a logo because of cost or you felt you didn’t have the ability to do it right, listen up! New services make it easy for every business to have a national-quality logo for a “next to nothing” price. In this video, Eric explains the need for a logo, how to prepare for a logo-building project, and then lists his favorite resource for having it done! Don’t put it off any longer. Watch this video and start branding your company!
Note from Eric: Below, you will find a word-for-word transcript of this video. I provide this as an aid for the hearing-impaired and for those who might just want to read it rather than watch the video. This conversational style is not reflective of how I write. Be nice! Hey I’m Eric Spellmann with Spellmann & Associates and I’m here to tell you today about how to get a logo for your business. Now some of you might already have a logo, some of you may think that you don’t need a logo.Well let me tell you, one of the reasons you must have a logo is to make sure that people understand who you are. And we’re going to go over all the reasons for that. But most importantly, at the end, we’re going to talk about how you can get a logo really cheap.
So first let’s talk about a logo’s purpose. Basically if you have to define what a logo is, it is a symbolic representation of your company. In other words, if someone were to see this thing, whatever it is, they would think of your company, they would automatically connect with your company.
I mean think about this, the Nike Swoosh. Whenever you see that, they don’t even have to write the word “Nike”. You automatically think Nike. The purpose of a logo is to connect something visual to your company’s identity basically. The purpose is branding. You want to be able to put it everywhere on t-shirts, on caps, on billboards, painted on the sides of vehicles.
It needs to be everywhere. That way when people see it, they think of your company. Because remember, one of the key marketing principles, you’ll hear me say this a million times, is top of mind awareness! After all, everything I’ve tried to teach you with these videos is about online marketing. Coming back to top of mind awareness, let’s talk of an example.
When someone needs something in your industry that you provide, when they think of that thing, you want them to think of you. Well that’s what a logo helps to do. A logo, when they see that thing, that symbolic representation, they think of you. And it is key, every business needs a logo. Heck even Spellmann & Associates has a logo. You know the little circle with the mouse in the middle with the 2 l’s and the lines, that’s my logo. And I put it everywhere.
So, what are the ingredients to a good logo? If you think you want a logo built, you wanna make sure you have the right thing. Well first figure out, is your logo going to be words, symbols or both. A lot of it depends really, because if you’re going to use words I would rather them be short words. Remember, it’s got to be something that people can recognize and also quickly understand.
If it’s going to be a symbol, I would rather it be a very simple symbol. You don’t want a very complex thing for a logo and the reason I don’t like complex logos is because from a distance it’s hard to tell what the detail is.
Keep in mind the biggest logos are the simplest logos. Do I have to mention Nike again? or Pepsi or McDonalds. Extremely simple logos, but recognizable from a distance. You don’t even have to see the name of the company to know who they are. You can combine the two.
And I have even seen in the online world if your web address is short enough (your “dot com”), people can even incorporate that into their logo. I remember eBay did that at one point, ebay.com. And some others, petfood.com was another one and some others actually used their “dot com” as part of their logo.
What kind of colors should you be using? Well, this is a tougher one. Chances are your business already has maybe a color palette or color choices and you may want to stick with that. Or if you have a retail location, your store has already been painted certain colors.
I’ve been always of the opinion that you need to keep what’s online and your logo and what’s in store or in your office kind of consistent, we don’t want different experiences. So from a color choice standpoint, I would prefer that they be consistent. Now, my colors are blue, black and orange. At one point they were just blue and black. And I thought orange! Who thought of orange?
But it turns out that on this thing called a color wheel, remember I’m not a graphic designer. On that color wheel, orange is the exact opposite as that color blue I have. And it turns out orange is a complimentary color and it looks great. I actually had a whole wall in my office painted orange and it’s amazing! So, sometimes let a professional help you or go to a color wheel. You can look them up online, find a color wheel and whatever color you have, look at the exact opposite color and that’s called a complementary color. And they usually go together.
Use Google Images. Folks this is my favorite, favorite part of the entire logo hunt that I help customers with. For instance, let’s say I have a customer who are a certain kind of restaurant, maybe a Chinese Restaurant. So what I will do is I will search for “Chinese restaurant logos” in Google, and it will give me all sorts of web results.
If you look at the top or look at the right side where Google gives us some options, one of the options will be “Images”. And when you click on that, all you are going to see are pictures, and because I put in “Chinese restaurant logos”, guess what I’m about to see. So what I tell my customers to do, is that to look through those because we’re not going to copy them. I mean heck that’s illegal and that’s someone else’s logo and you don’t want to do that.
They’re not going to copy any logo, but having a look at them will give them an idea and think what do I like and what I don’t like! Because so much of a logo is about the creative part and we need a little help. We need a little spark under there to kind of get us thinking. So, my favorite tip, the biggest tip of this entire video probably is to go to Google and do an image search and put the word “logo” after whatever your business industry is. It will blow you away how many there are out there.
My favorite place to get logos done is 99designs. It’s a website, 99designs.com. And the way it works is through a little something called crowd-sourcing. Okay. Now what does crowd-sourcing mean?
99designs actually holds a contest. And basically you can get any logo for around 300 bucks! And that’s how cheap it is, it’s amazing. So you go on there and you sponsor a contest for 300 bucks. And you upload copies of some other people’s logos that you like. You also say “I like this and that.” And they guide you through a whole questions and answers thing. “Do you like this kind of logo?” “Do you like contemporary?” “Do you like rounded?” “Do you like square?” “What kind of colors you’re thinkin?”
So they ask you all these really neat questions and you answer them. You tell them whether you want words on the logo or not. And once again you upload samples of logos that you kind of like, and then what happens is the magic part. Then what they do is they put this contest out for all their thousands of designers around the world, just contractors around the world!
And what these guys do is they compete for your logo. Within 12 hours, and I’m not kidding here. Within 12 hours, you will start to receive these contest entries. People who’re coming up with their ideas. Actual logos, you log-in and you start seeing them. Every time I do it I get 100s of submissions from people all around the world.
So then what you do is really cool. Then what you do is you start “voting people off the island” so to speak. You say “I like this one” or “I don’t like this one.” Or, you say “I like this one.” You then type a note to him saying “I wish it looks more like this. I wish you can move this here or change the color there.” And they do it! So what happens is you slowly start narrowing down the number of people designing the logo. And then you have the final round where you choose the winner. And whoever the winner is, gets the 300 dollars!
It’s simple as that. It’s a contest. And so these people, not only are they speedy but also the quality is amazing. I mean you’ll have your contest done within a week, totally done. You’ll have your first entries within the first 12 hours. And when it’s all said and done, you get your logo and you can use it in any format you need to. It belongs to you. All of the copyright, all the trademarks go to you! I highly recommend it.
So what are some considerations, if you are thinking about giving 99designs.com a try. And by the way, I don’t make any money by telling you to use them. I’m not an affiliate. I’m just telling you what works for me, and what works for a lot of my customers as well.
Keep in mind, speaking of me, marketing firms can help guide you through the process. Because while you can do 99designs.com on your own, a lot of times it helps to have someone guide you and help you to figure out and ask the right questions. Someone outside of your company, who has a different perspective of your company.
Pick a logo carefully. Remember, you want this thing to last forever. And so you’ve got to make sure that whatever you pick, is good for the long term. I actually had this thought about mine, because I have a mouse in the middle. And you’ll notice that the mouse in my company’s logo hasn’t got a wheel in the middle! Well, when I had the logo made, they didn’t make that.
So will I change it now? I don’t know, I may adjust it later but I’m not going to change it because I really like it. So, pick your logo carefully. Make sure that it is something you can live with for a very long time.
Remember, everything revolves around it. Once your logo is made, everything, and I mean every bit of your marketing should go around that logo. It should be on everything. Heck you can even see mine in my presentation here, it’s on my sign, it’s on my emails, it’s on my business cards, it’s on labels, it’s on envelopes, it’s on shirts, it’s on caps!
The logo is critical. You want people that every time they see it, they know who it is without even having to read a word on it. Everything revolves around your logo and it deserves to be done right. And one of the advantages I found by using a company like 99designs who employs crowd-sourcing is that we get a lot of different ideas. A lot of times when you hire just a single graphic designer to build your logo, they basically have a preconception of what your logo should be.
But when you go to a company like 99designs, you’re drawing on the creativity of thousands of people, and you’re going to see some amazing results! Every one of my customers who’s used them loves that!
Once again if you have any questions don’t hesitate to ask. I’m Eric Spellmann and we help with online marketing. So if you’re trying to take your business to the next level, if you’re online and don’t know what to do, give me a call. I’d be happy to help. Well once again I’m Eric Spellmann and I’ll see you in cyberspace.