Business Brainstorming: How to Come up with Logo Ideas

Your first step in creating your business, whether brick and mortar or online, is coming up with some of the most creative logo ideas.

How a logo is formatted can have a profound effect on how a consumer responds to your brand and their likelihood of doing business with you. Per that fact, it’s integral that your company do everything in its power to make sure that the logo your concoct captures who you are and why people should care.

So then, what’s the first step to creating the next iconic Nike “Swoosh”? Brainstorming logo ideas!

You might think that the process of throwing out potential logos and slapping them on your product is a simple one. If you want to see results though, you need your path towards the ultimate design to have creative structure.

Below, we share steps that you can take which will improve your ideation process and help you to land on the perfect logo.

1. Start With Constraint-Free Ideation

Wouldn’t it be great if you and your team could sit down and throw out logo ideas without constraints? In reality, fear of judgment will likely keep a ton of potentially beautiful suggestions from ever hitting your whiteboard.

To get the most out of your brainstorm session, make it clear to yourself and others that there’s no such thing as a bad idea. Throw everything out there, write it down and edit later.

2. Narrow Your Focus by Discussing What Makes You Different

Now that your creative juices are flowing, take a step back and think about what makes your company different from others. Does your company operate in a certain niche? Does it have some sort of a service specialty within that niche like lightning-fast service?

Note those things and examine which of the logo ideas you’ve come up with so far that capture those elements. If none of them do, make tweaks or come up with new logo ideas altogether.

3. Start Mocking Things Up

At this point, you probably have logo concepts written out and/or some rough sketches. To refine your vision, take some of the concepts/designs that you like the best and start mocking them up with more intent.

You can use logo creation tools like Looka or even traditional ink on paper to accomplish this process. Try to dump out five to ten mock-ups that your team can structure a discussion around.

4. Filter Through Simplicity

The average person has an attention span that’s shorter than a goldfish. For your logo to have an impact on those people, it needs to communicate a message to them quickly.

Therein lies the value of simplicity.

Logos like Nike’s “Swoosh” or Apple’s “Apple” tell you something at a glance. Your logo should aim to communicate meaning every bit as efficiently.

5. Give It a Test Run

You’ve thrown out ideas and have refined them through several filters. The final hoop that you’ll want to throw your logo ideas through is a field test.

Take your best logos to co-workers that were not involved in your brainstorm and ask them what meaning they pull from one of your designs without giving them context. Test your logos in the same way with people in your target market.

With candid feedback collected, make any essential edits and you’ll find that the product you have left will be ready to be the face of your brand!

With Effort, Anybody Can Come up With Great Logo Ideas

You don’t have to be a creative savant to come up with excellent logo ideas. All you need is a willingness to step through a solid creative process and the temperament to accept feedback.

Best of luck with your logo and feel free to mine more inspiration from the many excellent lifestyle posts that we have featured on our blog!