Logo Design Trends to Avoid

Enter you, a small company trying to push its way up into competing against a horde of god-level major companies. That certainly looks terrifying, right?

But it’s not, that’s if you design your logo wisely.

I’ll be informing you of the general principles of logo design as well as trends that should be avoided to ensure you settle on a sick logo!

Logo Design 101

One of my most favorite metal bands, Metallica, developed their logo idea literally out of a simple brainstorm.

But if you’ve never gotten that far with creativity, here are some tips that may trigger your creativity surge into brainstorming a nice logo.

Tips on Brainstorming

First of all, I’d like you to organize your thoughts and feelings towards your brand.

How would you describe your brand?

If we’d take Metallica as a fun example, they’re a heavy/thrash metal band. So, of course, they’d be mostly described as rough, raw, and such.

Try to compile many adjectives that describe your brand. Settle for the best 3 or 4 that suit your brand the most.

How would you want people to perceive your brand?

This is related to how you’d describe your brand. If you have a description of your brand in mind, you definitely want to deliver it exactly as it is.

If you own an IT company, for instance, maybe you’d want your customers to perceive your company as a smart, geeky one.

This is where the logo comes in handy. You can use it to implement this feel in your customers, which takes us to the next point.

What kind of feelings would you like to incite in people on seeing your logo?

On seeing your logo, people may have a general feel of what your company’s about. So if there’s a certain feel you’d like to deliver, try to incorporate it into your logo’s shape and dynamics.

Actively Designing Your Logo

First, determine which time exactly your creativity reaches its peak.

For some, it may be before bed or directly after breakfast. But it’s definitely not after a thick, fatty meal that’s destroyed all your brain cells.

Now that you’ve brainstormed all there is regarding your brand and the type of message you’d like to get across through your logo, we’ll briefly mention some of the types of logos.

There are generally many types of logos, each emphasizing typography (font), color, and style in a different manner.

From these types, pick the one that’d suit your taste as a rough outline of your logo.

Emblem Logos

This is the most traditional type of logos. The most famous emblem logo would be that of Harvard University or NHL, the National Hockey League.

Mascot Logo

Yes, you can adopt a mascot if you’d like and set it as your logo. Companies like Pringles, Kool-Aid, Mr. Peanut did that, so why not?

Combination Logo

Like that of Adidas, for instance. You combine both shape and your company’s brand name.

Lettermark Logo

Lettermark/Monogram logos utilize 2 or 3 letters (usually the company’s initials) to create a single symbol. HP, LG, and many others adopt that style.

Wordmark Logo

It’s a type where the company’s name is stylized and custom-designed. Like that of Google and Microsoft.

Design Trends To Avoid

Each year, new logo design trends emerge to adapt to the present time’s environment.

However, with the surge of these trends, some ideas can be overused or are simply predicted that they won’t last long and thus become outdated. Here are some examples.

Color Gradient

With the constant evolvement in color display, logos consequently tend to implement more vibrant colors and the general idea of gradient colored shapes.

However, overdoing it isn’t advisable. Your logo’s features should be still made out even if it was reduced to black and white.

Thin Lines

They look neat, simple and nice. But if you minimize your thinly-lined logo into smaller sizes, it’d look horrendous, or you probably won’t be able to make out its features anyway.

Even if you scale down your logo it should be still recognizable.

Dots

Your company’s name with some randomly colored dots scattered above. It’s simply generic, no creativity no inspiration. Just meh.

Helvetica, Comic Sans, and Papyrus

These are massively overused. Proceed with caution when using Helvetica and the rest while designing your logo.

Trees

Unless you’re a company specializing in forestry, lumbering or environmental advocacy, don’t use them purposelessly. It won’t make sense at all.

Overlapping Letters

Especially initials. This was the norm for almost all law firms, and it’s a thought that may have passed by your mind while brainstorming.

But please, resist it all you could. This too is extremely outdated and generic.

Chat Bubble Logos

For all you social app companies out there, please heed to my call. This logo template is so bland it’s now outright cringe-worthy to apply.

Most arising social app companies have this unexplainable urge to place a social bubble on their logos and it’s understandable, but it’ll make it far from unique.

Also

If you happen to be a real estate company, try to break out of the shell of including houses in your logo.

Medical companies are suffering in logo design creativity as well. It’s always about the cross, mortar and pestle, rod of Asclepius or Caduceus.

While these are good indicators that the company’s medicine related, just slapping one of these is very outdated. Try to tweak it out a bit.

The very same goes for Technological companies and financial companies.

While these two tend to mention their company’s names in Sans Serif with some abstract shape to build trust with their customers, it’s always good to try something new.

In a Nutshell

Your logo is essentially what sticks in people’s minds. It has to be attractive, timeless, and reflective of your company.

Once you’ve achieved that, congrats! Recognition will come with time, but make sure to spice it up as well with some good-quality marketing and you’re set towards your journey to greatness.