DIY Logo

Your logo is probably the most important part of your brand. If you have any budget at all, spend it on this. However, a lot of people just don’t have the money when they are first figuring out their business. If you absolutely must do a DIY option (ahem, until you’ve saved up enough to hire a pro to do this for you), here are some pointers:

• Keep it simple. A nice sans-serif typeface, in black or one single colour, with clean lettering and maybe a second font weight? Always a classic choice.
• Stay away from cutesy fonts. You know, the Papyrus-es and the Comic Sans-es of the world. Nothing will say “I’m not a professional” faster than a cutesy font.
• Pick one or two colours and make sure they actually look good together. Use a resource like DesignSeeds, to find colours that are complementary and sophisticated looking.
• Stick with a wordmark. A wordmark is your name or your company’s name written in a particular font (think: my wordmark, see the top of this page). A logo is more of an image-based representation of your name or company (think: the Nike swoosh). You don’t want to spend a bunch of time trying to figure out how to make an image that represents your company, because you won’t be able to. That’s when you call in the professionals.
• Look at logos you like. Look at the companies’ whose branding you like. Like Apple’s brand? Use a sleek font and a minimal colour palette. If you can find a common thread amongst all of the logos you like, use that.

If you follow the few points above, you can get away without a “proper” logo for a little while. That said, I highly recommend that you hire a professional do make you a logo as soon as your business picks up steam. A professional logo will make you look like a professional, yourself! It will represent your business, should be timeless and will establish you as an expert in your field.

For more on DIY branding, read this post on How to Create Your Visual Identity.