TIPS FOR SELECTING THE BEST LOGO DESIGNER
BUDGET
A business logo is an investment in both your time and your money so anytime a design company presents a money back guarantee try to remember that they can not reimburse the amount of time you commit which is much more precious than your money is.
PORTFOLIO
Some design firms talk a good game but in the end a design agency can only be judged from the quality of their design work, if the work in their portfolio doesn’t contain actual examples odds are they won’t be able to deliver a premium logo design.
VISION
A logo’s goal is to be recognized and remembered, and it’s purpose is to reflect your personal vision for your company. If a designer is not focused on actualizing your vision, the thing they are actually focused on is how soon they will get paid.
Bellflower LOGO DESIGN
For over 20 years ImageCo has been helping start ups and entrepreneurs cultivate memorable brand identities. We have done brand design work for builders, schools, diamond miners, party planners, cafes, retailers, and practically every other kind of business you can think of. What makes us different compared to our contemporaries is that our background is rooted in the electrical sign industry so we approach every logo design project as if it will be used as an electric sign. As a result of our sign first method our brand identity designs can, and have been employed in everything from fashion labels to billboards. Our sign first technique insures that our logos are just as effective whether they are used in television commercials or website headers, they are consistently identifiable, comprehended, and remembered regardless of size or use.
American Made ★ Design
Something that really sets ImageCo apart from other design firms that you might possibly have encountered in Google’s search results, companies like Thumbtack, Design Hill, Upwork, or Crowdspring is that each and every project we are retained to perform, we perform ourselves. No matter the kind of design project we accept, logo design, web page, trade show exhibition, or commercial sign, we do not, and never will farm out our client’s work to contractors based outside the US. When you call us at 1-855-IMAGECO the individual that answers the phone is ImageCo’s owner and designer, not a broker that increases the price of your design project and imposes the terms of how we conduct business.
CHARACTERISTICS OF AN EFFECTIVE LOGO DESIGN
- Simplicity: simple logos don’t need contemplation, they can be understood in just a look.
- Scalability: from business cards to billboards a scalable business logo will be legible and just as emotive at every scale.
- Versatility: logos which operate on any sort of device, in print, on product packaging, on a mobile phone, or on a ball cap.
- Suitability: they are appropriate, they feel personal, and they are suitable for the product or business they represent.
- Relevance: a business logo must be enduring and should feel equally relevant today, tomorrow, and forty years from today.
understanding branding
Brand – It’s a verb as well as a noun, it is an identifying mark and the act of marking something so that it could be identified, its origin comes from the mark burned onto livestock. These days a brand indicates virtually anything with an intention, regardless if it be earnings or government agencies, a brand is an intrinsic aspect of defining the worth of a specific thing in the public’s mind.
Branding – Is kind of like marketing and advertising’s sexy sister, they are both from the same family, the difference being that marketing and advertising have to do with making a promise and branding’s goal is to deliver on that promise. Branding is also a calculated popularity contest aimed at a target market, it’s objective is to produce an image that the target market will likely identify with.
Brand Image – An image planted and cultivated by advertising and marketing as well as identity design. When somebody says the brand names Lamborghini or Corvette what we think about is their brand image, it’s an image that exists in our minds. That image isn’t an image of an automobile with 4 wheels that can carry us from point A to point B, the the mental image we have (or at least I have) is of freedom, beauty, of something dangerous and unique . That is brand image and brand image is what makes people buy those products. Brand image is why people identify with most things, from Nike to Adidas Chevy or Ford, Democrats or Republicans … all driven by brand images that people can identify with.
Branding Companies – If you reflect on the beginning of many branding agencies you’ll discover that they are frequently rebranded marketing and advertising agencies. When someone says they are in advertising and marketing most individuals will likely have an idea about what they do. However when somebody states “I’m in branding”… it just sounds much more attractive, possibly it’s due to the fact that the majority of people don’t know what it means to be in branding so it comes off as more mysterious and kind of sexy.
Brand Identity – Is an inclusive term that explains the visual components of a product or company that influence understandings. This mainly consists of the name, the logo, the product packaging, the colors utilized yet can also consist of audio, lights, texture, signage, really anything that can be seen, felt or heard belong to a brand identity.
Brand Identity Designer – A brand identity designer is a visual designer that concentrates on a type of visual design that helps form the public image of a company, a product or a company. Brand identity designers create logo designs, signage designs, packaging, and collateral products such as business cards, stationery, and also brochures. Some visual designers also design websites as well as software interfaces. The important role of a brand identity designer is to develop the visual cues as well as an emotional tone with the goal of affecting activities, end results as well as assumptions.
select logos & signs
Ferry Street Coffee Company | Logo Design | Retail Branding
This fledgling coffee roaster and cafe were launching in an older section of the city and hoped to cast an old-fashioned feel without coming across as stodgy or low energy. I achieved both of these tasks via creating a sign concept that contains a man on a high wheel bicycle (aka The Penny Farthing), it is antiquated, high energy, and is a classic business image.
Mid-Valley Pathology | Logo Design
Pathology is the science that analyzes the root causes and outcomes of diseases, especially the field of healthcare that works with the clinical evaluation of samplings of body cellular material for diagnostic or forensic purposes.
The Mid-Valley Pathology custom logo design I came up with is the sole instance I recall where I was able to integrate a bacteria-laden microscope slide within a business logo design.
Typically I try not to be overly literal with a concept and to a degree, this specific design approaches the company it serves quite literally, yet it does it in a fashion that integrates the slide as part of the name so it doesn’t serve so much as a description of what Mid-Valley Pathology does so much as acts as an enhancement to the name that makes it more interesting, more interest grabbing and more unforgettable.
Cool Springz | Logo Design | Retail Branding
The Cool Springz Trampoline Park was a very fun project to work on, probably because a trampoline park is all about fun. It’s additionally a project that is way out of the usual of the sorts of projects that come my way, I’ve produced dozens of logo designs for health care providers, dental professionals, and legal professionals but Cool Springz is without question the one and only trampoline park which I have actually ever had the privilege to work on.
Given that the full name of the business features the word springz in its name the apparent choice would have been to feature a couple springs into the concept but Cool Springz is a fun location to go and spring doesn’t really resonate an environment of fun does it. My thought process on this logo design project went from springs (boring) to what jumps around, kangaroos … but kangaroos are cute and this place is cool, eventually I landed on a green tree frog and a dimensional treatment of the name itself to give the logo a more lively high energy mood.
In the end, Cool Springz ended up loving my brainchild and named the frog Jax and featured him in to everything they used for advertising. I also believe this is the only time that a logo I designed was made into a mascot when they had a staff member costume fashioned to look just like my frog design.
Travel Don’t Wander | Logo Design | Website Design
Travel Don’t Wander was a logo job I took on for a travel photographer, which is a pretty specialized field of photography and I believe it is a niche profession due to the fact that travel photographers don’t capture places or things but rather communicate emotional journeys by means of the images they capture. The idea behind this logo composition was to make use of negative space to convey more than what was visible upon first view, which I think is quintessential of the majority of good photographers in that they frequently convey entire stories through their photography.
It’s said that a picture is worth a thousand words but I think that some photographs convey a lot more than that because their photos often have an emotional fullness which can’t be communicated with just words. I made an effort to do something similar to this logo by making use of the positive space in the design to suggest one thing and then at the same time using the negative space to expand upon what was conveyed through the first impression. I think, in hindsight, that my goal was to both brand this photographer with a memorable Bellflower logo but also to show the depth of her work and in the way that she views the world through the lens of her camera.
Coastal Wireless | Logo Design The majority of logo design projects that I take on I seriously enjoy and the Coastal Wireless design was one that I really felt good about, but the client didn’t quite share my excitement for it. I felt really good about the idea of using the seagull shape as a stroke in the letter A however the customer, even though he loved the concept, really did not care for my choice of birds. This guy genuinely loathed seagulls, which he referred to as the “rats of the sky”, fortunately the rest of his family members did not share his contempt for this particular variety of sea bird. When I turn a concept over to a customer I encourage them to discuss it with friends and family as well as with folks that they don’t even know so as to get impartial point of views on the merit of a design. Fortunately, he shared it with his family members and they really liked the design and were able to reason with him and get him to sign off on it, but not before he worked me over to include every other seabird he could think of … in the end I was able to talk him out of his choice of a pelican and he proceeded with the original design. Business logos are a weird creature in the design world given that the people that are inclined to hire a professional to design their logo design realize how important a logo is for their organization so they are much more vested in the outcome. Every logo project possesses it’s portion of challenges, however the most significant challenge is finding that sweet spot in a design that functions really well at the job it’s required to do in branding a business and also providing the client the identity they see for themselves.
Red Panda Publishers | Logo Design
The book spine is a thin piece of real estate to work with, but it is the most essential part of a published book because it is in most cases the very first thing a person views in the book shop. Regarding a publishing company, it’s the optimal opportunity they will ever have to spotlight their product and get their logo design in front of the men and women that shop for actual books.
This three color design is vibrant, colorful and eye-catching and it leaves plenty of area for the title and the author’s name.
Air LA | Logo Design
Airlines come and go however it seems like that in many cases 1 of the items people often tend to remember the most are their logos. The Air LA logo design was done for a young start-up commuter/shuttle airline company situated in LA and although I’m not sure it really “took off” their business logo didn’t slow them. The bookend A’s in their brand lent itself well to conferring a spirit of airline flight and it was definitely a success.
Vintage Case | Logo Design
Vintage case specialized in new cases for musical instruments, that seemed to be antique cases. For this brand concept I tried to come up with a logo that offered a fluid old-fashioned feel to it and could easily be used for everything from a website to a label on brand new cases that seemed like they were from another era.
Kujak Orthodontics | Logo Design | Sign Design
Dentistry logo designs can easily be one of the most challenging logo projects due to the fact that it appears that every dental professional integrates a smile, a tooth, a smiling tooth, or a toothy smile in their design. Dental logo designs are one of the very most cliche ridden professions when it comes to business branding, if dining establishments approached their advertising in the exact same way dental offices do every one of their logo designs would definitely be a picture trying to explain something they served, McDonalds would most likely have a picture of a potato and a cow.
I understand the thinking behind incorporating a likeness of something mouth associated to a dentist’s company logo but it has to be performed subtly or it will just look like every other clipart dental professionals logo that litter the branding landscape of the dental care profession.
I really love doing dental care logo designs because it challenges me to come up with a design that implies the field of dentistry or a certain area of dentistry like orthodontics without resorting to the clichéd solution that so many dentists settle on.
Kujak Orthodontics offered such an opportunity and eventually I created a design that does not have a single smile or a tooth in it, but even though they aren’t obvious, they are still suggested in the concept. When I turned this particular concept over to the customer the only smile that was evident was the smile on Dr. Kujak’s face.
William McNally | Logo Design | Branding
The William McNally Family Foundation contacted ImageCo to help them come up with a brand identity design that would be illustrative of the devotion that William McNally had for the residents in his community. Most logos with the name “family” in them tend to contain depictions of a happy family, a cliche heavy approach to any logo design is to be very literal pertaining to what the name says or the industry it represents. I’ve found that the best concepts are the ones that are understated and don’t hit the viewer on the head with what the company or organization wants to convey.
The McNally Foundation’s name presented a distinct opportunity to do a logo design which conveyed that they were about families without being openly tacky about it. The goal of a logo design is to be remembered and recognized and if the designer attempts to use the logo design to summarize exactly how people ought to think or feel they don’t understand the mission of a logo. If viewers have to consider a logo design to understand what it means, it has been in vain, a logo needs to be immediately comprehended and a logo design that describes itself won’t have the chance to be understood.
Wild Orchid Studio | Logo Design Project
Wild Orchid Studios required a company logo that projected a feeling of contentment and elegance for their new hair studio. I came up with a concept that didn’t go the obvious path of crafting merely a stylized orchid but instead crafted a logo design that suggested a flower in the formation of a swirl featured into the letter O in the title and by placing emphasis on the logo design using the silhouette of a hummingbird hovering above the logo design itself. The obvious path in creating a logo is usually the incorrect route and in this case, the design ended up not being about the orchid but alternately laid the attention on the perception that they really wanted to project to their clients.
Dazzo Arabians | Logo Design
ImageCo designed a one-of-a-kind creative logo design styled to symbolize the unique physical traits of the Arabian breed of horses. With a different head form and higher tail carriage, the Arabian is one of the most quite easily recognizable equine types in the world.
Las Cafe | Logo Design | Restaurant Branding
Las Coffee shop logo style a little dining establishment, design contains a customized manuscript typeface which hovers over a group of luxuriant lines as well as dots.
Smart Kernels | Logo Design
A kernel is the central component of an operating system (OS). Typically, the kernel is responsible for memory administration, process and task control, and disk managing. The kernel attaches the system hardware to the application software. In other words a kernel is {essentially|quite literally a bridge that performs as a bridge in between the software and computer hardware.
The logo I came up with for Smart Kernels was based on an actual bridge that is situated a couple of miles from the offices of Smart kernels. It’s a logo design that doesn’t attempt to point out anything to anyone about what business they are in or how it relates to their specific location. Nevertheless it intimated something to the business owner of the company and in quite a few cases the significance behind a business logo is equally as important as how it serves the enterprise it stands for.
Evolv Interior Design | Logo Design | Branding
Evolv Design is a Bellflower interior design company and this logo design is representational of the work that an interior designer does in. An interior designer is a person who prepares, investigates, collaborates, and oversees such tasks. Interior design is a diverse profession that involves conceptual development, area planning, location assessments, programming, research study, interacting with the stakeholders of a project, construction supervision, and execution of the design.
Advanced Leadership Solutions | Logo Design | Website Design
This particular Bellflower logo design project was done for a management consultant that aids business professionals to develop into more effective at overseeing people, expectations, and profitability.
On The Fly | Logo Design | Retail Branding
With brand names such as Cabelas and Bass Pros raking in more than 7 billion a year offering goods and equipment to outdoor sporting fans the founders of On the Fly realized the market was prepared for an outdoor sporting store that operates as a consignment business. Whether you are into boating, sportfishing or rock climbing, or even hunting, On the Fly presents a location for outdoor sports enthusiasts with all types of passions, a location to sell off their pre-owned items to other sports enthusiasts.
I designed their Bellflower logo design design using an image that garners the interest of vehicles and projects an image that evokes the passion of the outdoors. With visitor traffic that averages 45 mph I knew it would take more than the typical logo/sign to get travelers to take notice, hence the image of a fly fisherman in his natural and serene habitat.
MQ Farms | Logo Design | Branding
The MQ farms company logo concept wasn’t actually designed for an Bellflower regional farm it was actually developed for a products broker, and this particular brand was one of many that fell underneath the MQ umbrella … MQ commodities was one, MQ trading was another. The aim was actually to design a brand mark that projected confidence, success, and prosperity.
Turning Point Foundation | Logo Design
The Turning Point Foundation was completely open to what type of logo design that they would like, that can be a good thing or a bad thing. Good in that it gives a designer the flexibility to discover any idea that comes to mind, bad in that it’s difficult to hit a bullseye in the absence of recognizing where exactly the target is. Luckily, in this instance, I nailed a bullseye with the very first shot.
Brewgrrs Restaurant | Logo Design | Restaurant Branding
I have crafted dozens of restaurant logos and establishment signs for restaurants, diners, sports bars, night clubs, dining establishments, and eateries all over the USA, from cupcake bakeries to pizza parlors and oyster bars, out of all of them I think Brewgrrs was my absolute favorite. Brewgrrs was a neat project where I worked directly with the owner to produce a logo which worked very well and did a fantastic job to brand them, it functioned on everything on everything from coasters, and tap handles all the way to the illuminated signage that hung over their doors, and was highly visible and very easy to read from over a block away.
commercial brand identity design projects
