Logo design for starting companies

One of the first considerations for a new company is logo design. The logo is extremely important, since it represents the company and has great influence on the behavior of possible customers. Concerning to logo designer Graham Smith, "some of these companies just look lazy and uninterested in how their visual identity might fair with the punters". Apparently there a some problems for startups concerning this logo design. For instance, one of the most difficult aspects of logo creation for startups is to find a logo designer who provides good work, but is also accessible for a starting company with a low budget. Smith emphasizes that it is of great importance to spend money on the logo to make the company look good in front of the rest of the world. Otherwise, with a cheap and uninspiring logo, it will reflect badly on the company. 

In addition, Smith cautions startups for the fact that branding can often be the differentiating factor between two companies with similar products and ideas. A company with the same products and ideas but with an incredible logo and thus identity is more likely to have success than the other company, without the killer logo. Raj Abhyanker, CEO of Trademarkia (a firm specializing in trademarks and logos), completes this by saying that a starting company should stand out from the crowd and be distinctive and suggestive of the goods and services offered. The dual concepts of simplicity and  distinction are seen as primary considerations for startups' logo designs. He says: “A logo is really the first core message, the identity, that any brand provides to the world. And it has to be a logo that will work not just on a website homepage and on business cards but also as its Twitter or Facebook icon. So, you want it to be distinctive and yet simple at the same time.” 

That brings us to the next problem concerning logo design. As Abhyanker already stated, the logo should look good on the web, as well as on social network sites as Facebook and Twitter, but also printed, on business cards. In addition they have to work for multiple apps, icons and avatars. A main difference between traditional logo design and web logo design concerns the fact that the web is constantly changing. Nowadays websites look way different from when they just invented the web. Thus, it is a challenge to design a logo that changes with the web and thus is still relevant in a matter of years or months. This is hard, especially because we have no idea what the web will look like in 10 years. 

Finally the colors of the logo should be considered. This is not easy either, since the web somewhat deforms the colors. Thus, a problem can be that the colors of the logo look different on a business card than on Facebook. The deformed colors can look pretty awful on the web. Concerning to Smith: "As you would need to ensure that your print-based logo reproduces well in CMYK color, you need to ensure that your web-based logo will resize and adapt to various screen sizes and resolutions with color consistency. Creating icons for the complete range of Apple devices is almost a science and quotable job in itself if you are not used to it.”

In conclusion, it seems that the logo can be seen as the visual identity of the company, that should represent the company in an accurate manner, but comes with many problems when designing it!