When you’re starting up your own clinic or practice, a memorable, eye-catching logo is crucial. Changing your logo midstream is costly and can often dilute your brand so it’s worthwhile get your logo design right from the outset.
When you’re making decisions about your clinic logo keep in mind that it’s going to feature in a whole host of channels/platforms, including:
- Your website
- Social Media
- Email Signatures
- Print ads
- Content Marketing
- PR References
- Printed Material (if you really need it in the 21st Century!)
- Appointment Cards (again, if you really need them in the 21st Century!)
- Clinic frontage
Unless you’re a designer I’d recommend allocating a sensible budget (not £’000’s but up to £’00’s) and hiring one either locally or via one of the many outsourcing platforms out there like Upwork.
The key is to provide your designer with a good brief so that they understand:
- what your business does?
- what brand values you’re trying to convey? – Are you all about speed and availability or does attending your clinic feel more like a spa experience?
- Who you’re trying to target?
- What’s your price point?
- Personal preferences – they shouldn’t really come into it but they inevitably will so its worthwhile getting them on the table at the outset
- Budgetary range – not the exact figure but its often important on platforms like UpWork to define some kind of cap on the project so that it doesn’t run on and on and rack up costs. That said, on platforms like UpWork you don’t pay until you’re happy with provides a strong level of protection
If you don’t want to stump up for a “pro” you could turn to one of the many logo creation services like Logomaker but bear in mind the results aren’t going to be as good as getting something hand-crafted.
If you go down the self-creation route ask yourself the same questions as I’ve listed above (for the brief) and play around with different ideas. Before you commit to a design be sure to ask for feedback from friends and family as it is easy fall in love with your own creation 😀. Also, bear in mind the following things:
- Colours need to be web friendly
- Avoid logo designs that are excessively wide or high
- Create your logo with a transparent background
- Create inverted versions of your logo so that they work on both light and dark backgrounds
- Try to make your logo unique – these days there are some great drawing tools available on tablets (like Procreate and Assembly) that allow you to craft fabulous images. These can be very effective if you have the patience and some artistic ability
- Make sure you can create a favicon (square) version of your logo that you can use for social media profiles etc
- DONT EVER use clipart
