Designing your personal logo entails a well-thought-out plan, strategy, and approach to appeal to your target audience. Logos should be memorable, versatile, unique, simple, and scalable. Plus, your personal logo should carry your personal brand and put it in the best light. Do these 10 simple steps to design a personal logo that speaks your personality and delivers your purpose.
1. Evaluate your brand
The first step in designing your personal logo is to evaluate your brand. Your logo acts as the conduit between you and your audience. That said, it must speak of your brand and the identity you’re trying to portray.
Sit down and evaluate your brand to know what design elements are appropriate or not. For example, thinking of the font and colors that best represent your logo is critical. Moreover, the overall logo design must be akin to your personal brand’s values and vision.
Ask yourself these questions when evaluating your brand for your personal logo:
- Why did you establish the business in the first place?
- What are the problems you’re trying to solve?
- What are your brand’s values and beliefs?
- Describe your brand mission and vision.
- Think of three adjectives that best describe your brand.
- Who are your competitors?
- What do their customers think of their branding?
- What is your brand’s upper hand over your competitors?
- Think of three adjectives of how customers describe your brand.
2. Do market and competitor research
While you want to get creative in your personal logo, checking out what logos work in the market is essential. It lets you know what logos are in, what shapes are more appropriate in your industry, and what your competitors’ logos look like.
Know what particular shapes, fonts, and colors are used in your niche. Also, some logos come out as too cliche, so make sure yours doesn’t belong to that category. That last thing you want is to integrate overused design elements that don’t make your logo stand out. For instance, a cart icon for an online business would be too predictable.
The best thing you can do is also check out what your competitors’ logos look like. Don’t copy their designs. Instead, make yours better.
3. Identify your audience
Another crucial step in designing your personal logo is identifying your audience. Knowing your audience’s demographics and psychographics lets you create a logo that would appeal to them. Your target audience will relate to a logo, provided that you include all the correct elements they like.
To know your audience, do these simple methods:
- Assess your customer base
- Conduct interviews
- Distribute online surveys and polls
- Analyze your competitors’ customers
- Create buyer personas
- Monitor through Google Analytics
- Describe who your audience isn’t
4. Know what type of logo you want
The next step in your personal logo design is to know what type of logo you want that suits your brand. Choose from these seven types of logos:
- Monogram/Lettermarks. Logos that consist of initial letters of your brand name. (Examples: HBO, CNN, IBM)
- Wordmarks. This type is a font-based logo that carries your business name. (Examples: Coca-Cola, Visa)
- Pictorial Marks. Logos that display icons or symbols. (Examples: Target, Apple, Twitter)
- Abstract Marks. Geometrical logos that represent your brand. (Examples: Adidas, Pepsi, Starbucks)
- Mascots. Logos with an illustrated character and dwells on a cartoonish look. (Examples: Kool-Aid, KFC)
- Combination Marks. These logos combine all types of logos. (Examples: Burger King, Doritos)
- Emblem. Logos that have a symbol encompassing a text or typography. (Examples: Starbucks, Harley Davidson)
5. Choose a color palette
Choosing the right colors when designing your personal logo should correspond to color psychology. Colors evoke particular emotions within your target audience. That’s because each color represents an emotion or feeling that best depicts your branding.
Here’s a quick guide:
- Black (Mystery, power, sophistication)
- White (Cleanliness, simplicity, purity)
- Red (Passion, danger, energy)
- Yellow (Warmth, friendliness, intellect)
- Blue (Confidence, integrity, peace)
- Grey (Security, stability, authority)
- Green (Growth, freshness, money)
- Orange (Creativity, innovation, thinking)
- Violet (Royalty, luxury, wisdom)
6. Choose your font style
Just like colors, fonts also appeal to the right audience. Choose your font carefully, especially if you’re combining one to three font styles in your personal logo.
Here are the four most common types of fonts and what brand personality or identity each exudes:
- Serif fonts are fonts that have little lines at the edges of the letters. This type is suitable for traditional brands, aiming to emanate trustworthiness.
- Sans serif fonts are fonts without the lines at the letters’ edges. This font looks more modern and sleek, suitable for newer and younger brands in the market.
- Script fonts are cursive handwritten font styles that can give your brand logo a more authentic feel. Some examples are Barbie, Kleenex, and Coca-Cola.
- Decorative fonts are unconventional font styles that are playful and lighthearted. Lego, Fanta, and Toys R’ Us are a couple of decorative font examples with playful branding.
7. Brainstorm for ideas
Once you know what colors and fonts when designing your personal logo, it’s time to brainstorm for logo ideas. Sit with your friends, family, or team and gather as many ideas as you can. Think of every idea as revolutionary, no matter how crazy it may be.
8. Sketch your personal logo on paper
The next step in your personal logo design process is sketching. Sketch your ideas on paper. See if you want to revise the sketches by adding or eliminating some design components. Gather all your sketches and sift through them to choose the perfect logo for your personal brand.
9. Finalize your logo
Whether you’re DIYing your personal logo or hiring the experts, make sure you create several variations of your logo. This way, it looks good on every branding and marketing channel, such as websites, business cards, billboards, or merch.
Make sure you get the final high-resolution source file in vector format. That way, the quality will still be good regardless of how you want to resize the logo.
10. Gather feedback
Some of the most popular brands have undergone logo rebranding and redesign because their logos are outdated. To continually improve your personal logo, always ask for feedback. Be open to constructive criticism and always try to explain the interpretation of every design element. This way, your personal logo stays updated.
