The Making of a Logo For a Startup…

We had internally called Publictivity, StartPR for the better part of five months. We officially decided upon a launch name for the project about a month ago. Frank gets the credit on this one. Publictivity, if you couldn’t tell is a combination of Productivity and Public Relations. So what are the steps towards getting the right logo for your startup? There’s quite a few, and I’ll guide you through what we went through in the past few weeks:

Overall Feel-Overall feel of a logo is the huge first step. It should coincide with what your product defines. In our case, we’re business software. We had to go with a more professional and straight forward logo. If you’re a consumer app, or possibly a brick and mortar business, there are other feels. Consumer apps tend to be more bold, “fun looking”,etc. Brick and Mortar businesses tend to have a feel that can easily translate into a physical logo to place above the store.

The Colors-Most likely, you will have started some of the design for your application. If so, pick colors that match the application or compliment the scheme. You’re also going to want to have “alternate colors” developed, that will present alternate options. This is pretty straight forward. If you haven’t picked the colors for the design of your app, then you should do that first.

The “StandOut”-What is going to be noticeable about the logo? Sometimes it is a graphically designed letter, an accompanying icon, or something very clever. Look at FedEX’s logo. Inbetween The E and the X, it forms an arrow. Very cool, right? In our logo, we have the P designed graphically. In MySpace’s logo, there are the group of people. Basically, pick something that makes the logo distinguish itself. Make it a talking point, or something that if a person was only able to see that part of the logo, they would know it was your company.

The Slogan-This is sometimes very easy or very hard. We had to play around with words. At first, we had it as: Making Public Relations Productive. Well, that was kind of arrogant. We made it seem like PR practitioners did nothing all day long, which is far from true. Then we had Making Public Relations More Productive…. whoops. We’re a combination of productivity and public relations, not productive and public relations. Finally it came down to: Increasing Productivity in Public Relations. Not arrogant, and had productivity. The slogan should be your ethos, the one sentence that defines your product. For example, Sales Force is “Success On Demand”. It defines that their product is on-demand, and gives you the feel that it increases your productivity. Very short and very simple. Perfect.

Picking a Design Company-First rule of thumb… DONT CHEAP OUT. You will pay for it in the long run. The extra 75 dollars you save, will bite you in the ass. It will cost you more time, energy, and give you a logo you don’t want. Also be sure to check that you retain the IP rights to the logo. Also look up some past reviews on the company. In our case we went with LogoJeez. Reason being? NOTHING TO PAY UP FRONT. That’s right, they do all the work, and if you don’t like it, you don’t pay. We got 5 different options, and from those 5 different options we could revise one logo upto four times. Hands down, go with LogoJeez. We were able to receive a discount that made the bottomline price 208 dollars. Well worth it.

Revising It-This depends which company you go with. At the end of the day, you need to be picky. Revise it, and add what you really want… you’re paying for it! We used all four rounds of revisions we were allowed. Also, modify the version you get in photoshop, and send back detailed instructions to the artist. Trust me, this helps. No one can see what you see, but it helps them get closer to it.

So thats about all. Your logo is important, and take your time with it. This is the logo, slogan, and branding that will *hopefully* be seen by millions of people, and most importantly YOUR CUSTOMERS.

[tags] web 2.0, logos, logo design, logojeez, corporate branding, publictivity, myspace, web 2.0 logo design, tutorial, startup logos, startups, fedex [/tags]