Business Logo Ideas - Designing a Client-Oriented Logo – Know Your Targeted Customers!

When you are developing a brand identity for a client, you cannot afford to call your own shots. Most logo designers like to run their own show in a logo design project and also want the clients to be satisfied with whatever they do. But the fact of the matter is that you cannot have your cake and eat it too. The principle aspect to focus on when creating a brand identity is your ‘target market’. In a few cases, the client helps you in recognizing their target customers. However, when the client does not properly describe their intended audience, it is up to the logo designer to perform this endeavor himself. But without proper branding knowledge, designers fall short of correctly realizing the audience they are to design for. In this day and age, every business must focus around the preferences and liking of their customers. A company logo design that is deviant of these characteristics is unproductive. Hence, a customer-oriented logo design is necessary to effectively target your audience. So how do you develop an identity that is customer focused and targeted to your intended market? Following are five principles through which you can create a customer-oriented logo design:

1. Evaluate the Sector:

To start off the customer-focused approach, you must first evaluate the sector of your client’s business. For instance, if you are working on a business identity for an automobile firm, you must thoroughly investigate the nitty-gritty’s of the auto sector. This enables you to highlight what colors, symbols and fonts are appropriate for a particular industry. It is an observed fact that similar brands adopt same colors. Moreover, if you observe the logos for famous car brands shown above, you will notice that most of them employ a similar circular, emblem style pattern.

2. Analyze Rival Firms:

After an overall sector study, a logo designer must also conduct an internal analysis on the major players of the industry. Now this does not mean you start copying logo concepts from rival firms of your client. Analyzing the identities of competitors help you in understanding what elements appeal to the customers. For instance, if you are working on a soft-drink company identity, you will benefit greatly by learning famous brand logos like Pepsi logo and Coca Cola logo as they will aid you in comprehending what people look for in a beverage company logo.

3. Assess Demographic Attributes:

Once you complete the above steps, you are now ready to move your attention on your target customers. Understanding the consumer behavior involves two distinct aspects namely, demographic attributes and psychographic attributes. The demographic study of your customers involves knowing factors such as age, gender, race, income etc. For instance, the logo for famous Toy manufacturer Toys R Us was created keeping the demographic age of their target market (kids) in mind.

4. Examine Psychographic Attributes:

The second phase of understanding consumer behavior is psychographic attributes which involve factors such as personality, attitudes, values, interests and lifestyle pattern. This is equally essential in devising a customer-oriented logo as these these variables deeply affect the way consumers react to a particular brand logo. For instance, when designing religious logos, these factors come into play as you need to comprehend the values and beliefs of your target audience.

5. Put Your Logo Through a Trial-Run:

One common logo design mistakes that most designers make is not testing their final logo design. Before you settle on your ultimate design, you should put it through a trial run to verify whether the response is favorable. We have a perfect example of the Gap logo redesign that highlights the importance of my point. Without adequately testing their new identity in the market, Gap badly failed as a roar of criticism encapsulated their rebranding efforts.