Before you dive head first into a design, evaluate what your company projects.
Even though logos are meant to identify a company for a long time, there are trends in logo design that come and go. Some years, a certain font takes prevalence, such as the blocky Archer or artistic Papyrus. At other times, a societal issue, such as the environment, creates an influx of green, plant-inspired designs. Outside of what is trendy, there are core considerations in logo design that will bring you appropriate, visually interesting concepts.
Determine Your Audience
If your company targets children --- who then influence parents to purchase your products --- black, red and ghoulish fonts are not a good fit. Animated animals are a better choice. The first step in formulating a design is to consider who you are targeting with your message. Conventional marketing wisdom says to consider who signs the check, although there can be many layers to this principle. In the case of children's toys, the child typically chooses toys due to popularity, marketing or an in-store attraction, but the parents actually sign the check, so to speak. In your branding and logo design, you must target the individual who makes the decision to purchase your product over another brand, even if that is not the individual who physically makes the purchase.
Define Your Message
Also known as positioning, your message clarifies what you do for your defined audience in your industry. It is one thing to be a caf --- even adding in your audience definition. Say your business is a caf that serves college students. Is your caf a place to relax and read? Your logo and branding would use soothing pastel colors and comforting images. Do you pump lively, upbeat music on the speakers and serve drinks with names like "red eye" or "the jolt"? In that case, your logo and branding should involve bright colors and images related to energy. Formulate a short description of what you are, who you serve and what you do for them, such as a caf that serves college students energizing espresso drinks and provides ample workspace, and bring that to your logo and branding design process.
Play with Fonts
There are an unimaginable number of fonts available. What you see in your word processing program --- or even in Adobe's design suite --- is only the beginning. You can go to a website like WhatDaFont.com and search fonts by style, mood and theme. Logos, however, should be clear, and a complicated, thematic font may not be right for your company. Take your company name and copy it 20 or 50 times on a letter-sized sheet of paper. Assign each copy a different font and see what speaks to you. Even fonts that you don't like may make an impact or cause a reaction when associated with your company name.
Incorporate Images Subtly
There are two main ways to use images in your logo: separate from the text or incorporated into the text. As anyone who has seen teenage girls dot their "i"s with hearts knows you can easily go overboard incorporating shapes into text. In the same vein, a complicated image over your company's name draws focus from the name of your company itself. You can have an extremely striking and recognizable logo with no image or font alteration at all. Look at Google and Facebook.
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