How to Design an Attractive Clinic Logo
Posted on March 27, 2018 by Logo Design Tips and Tricks
Do you need a new clinic logo?
Whether you’re giving your current logo a refreshed look or creating a logo for a new clinic, there is a lot to consider.
You’ll want to get your logo design right because your logo can have a tremendous amount of impact on your clinic.
Researchers at MIT found that a good logo design can have a positive impact on your customer’s commitment to your brand, but also on your bottom line.
If you’re not sure how to design a logo for your clinic, you’ve come to the right place.
Here are the top tips to create an attractive clinic logo.
Start with the Brand
When designing a logo, you want to have a deep understanding of what the brand is. After all, a logo is a visual representation of a brand.
In order to understand your clinic’s brand, you’ll want to ask yourself questions to help guide you.
An easy way to go about it is to think about your brand personality. Creating your brand personality is a matter of thinking of your company as a person or character. You’ll then ask yourself a series of questions to uncover the traits of the brand.
- If my brand was a car, what would it drive?
- How would my brand dress?
- Where does my brand live?
- How does the brand speak and behave?
- What are the top adjectives to define my brand?
The last question is important because you’ll need to be able to define the main characteristics of your brand. Here are a few to think about to get yourself started:
Smart, sassy, strong, calm, relaxed, masculine, feminine, approachable, elegant, caring, quirky, energetic, serious.
You’ll then want to match these adjectives up with brand archetypes to discover what your brand’s personality is.
Not only will this exercise help you in designing a clinic logo, but you can use these traits in hiring staff. You can match the qualities of candidates with the qualities of the brand. That will help you determine if they’re a good fit for your organization.
Be Original
You do want to do some research on logos. It will start to get your creativity going as you discover what you like and dislike about logos you come across.
Looking at your competitors’ logos will also help you discover how they’re positioning their brand in the marketplace.
While doing research to get ideas is a good thing, you don’t want to copy elements of other logos. That can backfire on you and damage your brand. It can also raise some serious questions about your ethics.
For example, this clinic for STD & HIV testing took elements of Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign logo and tagline, right down to “Feel the Bern.”
While that seems creative and humorous at first, it isn’t a good long-term solution for a logo. Most people are only going to remember the campaign logo and slogan for a short period of time.
Not only that, but you can confuse your potential customers. They may think that your brand is somehow related to the campaign.
Use of Color and Fonts
It’s widely known that colors and fonts have an impact on your brand’s perception.
This is where you want to revisit your brand’s personality traits and create a logo that’s congruent with those characteristics.
For example, if you discovered that your brand is conservative, quiet, and strong, you can consider a dark blue color in your clinic logo. Dark blue tends to represent these characteristics, and it’s a more masculine color.
The font should reflect a similar tone. If you were to have a typeface that was a retro style, it won’t convey a conservative, quiet and strong brand.
The Shape of a Logo Impacts Your Brand
If you’re planning to incorporate shapes or symbols in your clinic logo, know that they have a psychological impact, too.
For example, the logo for this drug detox program incorporates triangles.
Studies have shown that hard angles such as these can create the perception of hardness and durability.
A rounded logo can be perceived as soft, warm, and attentive.
Either one can work well for a clinic logo, it comes down to what matches your brand’s personality better and what you want to convey to the public.
Put Your Ideas Down on Paper
As you’re going through this process, it’s important to keep detailed notes of what you want your brand to stand for and how that should be communicated visually.
These notes about your clinic’s brand personality, as well as what you liked and didn’t like about other logos.
Now, you can start sketching logo ideas. This is where you can let your creativity shine.
Don’t get to hung up on having to be perfect. These are just draft concepts, so feel free to play with colors, typefaces, and symbols.
Once you have your concepts down, go back and see which ones are most aligned with your brand personality.
You’ll want to have three solid logo concepts that you can start testing for feedback and review.
Test Your Ideas
Designing a great clinic logo is a collaborative process. Now that you have ideas down on paper, you can start getting feedback to see what works and what doesn’t.
Take your sketches and start showing them to trusted members of your staff and clients. If there’s one logo that they like more than others, ask them why.
You’ll also want to explain the brand personality to staff and clients. They may offer valuable insight and show you things that you may have missed in the process.
Start Designing Your Clinic Logo
Are you ready to start designing your logo?
As long as you’re true to the spirit of the brand and do your research, you’ll be able to design a logo that makes a great first impression.
You can get started right now with Online Logo Maker. There are images, templates, and fonts to help you draft something in a quickly as 10 minutes.
Check it out here.
5 Ideas for Medical Logo Design Inspiration
Posted on March 21, 2018 by Logo Design Tips and Tricks
Renowned designer Milton Glaser talks about the necessity for good design. “To design is to communicate clearly, by whatever means you can control or master,” says Glaser.
This is as true of medical logo design as any other branded asset.
Medical logo design is incredibly important to help your brand stand out from the competition. It’s a sign of originality and authenticity, which are two of the most significant factors in helping your business to stand out.
There’s no such thing as a plug-and-play graphic design. Every medical logo design is going to be different. That’s because every medical practice is different.
There are some universal design principles that you can apply to your brand’s visual identity, however.
Here are 5 ideas for your medical logo design to get you started.
5 Ideas For Your Medical Logo Design
The rules of design change as fast as the industries they represent. There will always be a new fad or gimmick to chase. Spending your time on time-honored designed principles is a better use of your energy and resources, as a result.
Here are a few classic design principles to help you find the best medical logo design for your practice or medical product.
Idea #1: Develop A Business Plan
It goes without saying, but you should spend a bit of time doing a classic business analysis before launching your even thinking about your medical logo. Your intended audience will greatly impact your medical logo design. So will your niche or industry.
Working in a highly technological field? Think about incorporating a pixelated logo to convey your technical savvy. Going into holistic health? Perhaps you might want to use the color green and some naturalistic imagery.
Idea #2: Investigate The Competition
Clarifying your brand identity should give you an idea of which direction your design is headed. Now it’s time to do some market research. After all, there are lots of medical logos in the marketplace.
The pharmaceutical industry in the United States alone is worth $450 billion annually. That’s a lot of competition.
One of the main reasons for market research is to make your brand unique. You can learn from your competition, as well. Spend some time researching the most common colors and typefaces for medical logos. These will serve as your building blocks to spin into your own custom medical logo.
Tip #3: Define Your Mood
Your logo is the first chance to broadcast the feeling you’re trying to associate with your brand. Do you want that to be calming? Or are you looking for more of an exciting image?
Think of the way things are often branded to market them towards men. Men tend to be reluctant towards anything soft or introspective. They also gravitate towards action-based aesthetics that help them feel confident and in control.
If you were designing a medical logo for a men’s product, a cotton candy pink logo with lots of flowers might not be your best bet. A little firecracker burst to give a pyrotechnic pop to your branding might be just the ticket, though.
The goal would be a little different if you’re designing a logo for a medical publication, as another example. This medical logo would need to convey authority and trust. Perhaps a pen crossed with a stethoscope might fit the bill?
A familiarity with symbolism in visual culture will serve you well when designing your logo. Visual elements are loaded with meaning. Make sure that you do some research that the symbolism is the same in other cultures if you’re working internationally, however.
Tip #4: Simplify
Your design is coming along and now it is time to refine your efforts. You likely have some ideas for typography and color design after doing your market research. You also have some design elements to convey the feeling of your brand.
Now it’s time to break these down into a memorable, iconic form. A great logo is unforgettable. It will stick with the audience from first glance and linger with them for years.
Think of the Nike Swoosh, for instance. It’s one of the most recognizable logos of the last 100 years. It’s also a glorified checkmark.
Or think about the iconic Apple logo? The first Macintosh’s featured a rainbow-hued Apple icon. Later iterations simplified the logo down to a single, solid color.
Simpler designs are easier to remember. They also convey the most important aspects of your medical practice, quickly and efficiently. Look at the colorful, stylized M of Muse Treatment‘s logo, as an example
Idea #5: Perform Market Testing
The greatest graphic design wasn’t created overnight. Nor was it created in a vacuum. Major corporations tend to have extensive marketing departments and overflowing budgets to test their designs.
You might be obsessed with your new medical logo but that doesn’t mean your customers will be. You’ve got to test the waters. Your visual branding is for the public, after all.
That’s not to say you need to spend a mint on market testing. Even running your medical logo by a few trusted friends with good taste and some design knowledge can be a major added bonus.
Market testing can actually save you money in the long run. Imagine if you had a bunch of merchandise printed with a logo nobody likes? That money would be down the drain.
You could possibly use your social media networks for some informal market testing, as well.
You could host a competition for your social media followers asking them to give you feedback on different logos. The hashtag campaign could make for some free publicity as one more additional benefit!
Ready To Design A Logo For Your Medical Business?
The rules for design are always changing. So are the tools that we have at our disposal. It’s possible for independent business owners to make world-class logos for their medical businesses if you know what you’re doing.
Your brand is unique. You have the vision to share with the world. Your logo will let the rest of the world what that vision is.
Get started with our free online logo maker today!
5 Smart Logo Design Tips for a Clinic
Posted on December 11, 2017 by Logo Design Tips and Tricks
Does your clinic have a powerful smart logo design to maximize brand promotion?
A logo can help your clinic stand out in the crowd and appeal to a wider, more diverse audience.
It can aid consumers to remember your clinic, and attach the picture to a physical place and name. Logos can also establish your brand’s values and make you more likable to potential clients.
It serves as the first impression of the clinic and as a reflection of the clinic as a whole.
Therefore, in designing a smart logo, there are many factors to consider in order to best promote your individual brand.
Read on to learn five key tips in forming a smart logo design for your clinic.
1. Keep it Clean
In 2017, there has been a growing trend towards a clean and simple logo design. This is expected to continue well into 2018.
A minimal, simple approach is needed to advertise with a logo in this day and age.
For example, even the 20-year-old logo of MasterCard was revamped in 2017 to be more modern, and minimalist.
2. Make it Versatile
A versatile logo is a good logo because it can be used in a multitude of channels towards many different audiences.
In addition, the last thing you want is a logo that looks good on one medium and not so great on another.
This tip also applies in terms of color. There’s just the right balance between too much color and not enough, and it’s important to consider how the logo will be used when deciding on the color scheme.
3. Design it Uniquely
This tip is almost too obvious, but try not to copy any well-known brand logos, especially if the company is also in your industry.
Living by this will avoid customer confusion, and benefit your clinic in the long run.
In addition, consumers know when a logo looks copied, and this does not usually leave the best impression.
4. Don’t Underestimate Color
While there is a balance between too much or too little color, it’s important not to underestimate color altogether.
There’s beauty in the simplicity of white, black, and empty space. But subtle, targeted color can also work wonders.
5. Don’t be Cliche
This tip goes hand and hand with the importance of being different. It can be tempting to simply follow the trends in your industry blindly while tossing aside originality.
Avoid being cliche, and give your clients a standout design that they will expect from you.
This is especially true when you provide them high-quality services such as safer STD testing. (You can read more on std testing here.)
The Best in Smart Logo Design
In the world of logo design, it can be difficult to find the right person or company for the job.
If you love the idea of designing your own logo on a user-friendly platform, look no further than online logo maker.
Our designer is perfectly customizable, and can easily be understood, even by technophobes.
Check it out today, and start making a killer smart logo design for your clinic.
How to Design a Welcoming Dental Office Logo
Posted on December 05, 2017 by Logo Design Tips and Tricks
Did you know that there are 195,722 practicing dentists in the United States?
Quite the number, isn’t it?
If you’re a dentist, it’s important to create a welcoming and inviting environment that attracts both current and potential patients. Creating a welcoming dental office logo can help you achieve that sense of warmth and safety.
Unsure how to create your own? Check out our expert tips!
The Tooth Logo
As a dentist, you work with teeth all day long. Whether you focus on restorative dentistry or specialize in pediatrics, all dentists know their way around the human mouth.
There are many ways to create a beautiful dental office logo that features teeth. Play around with using a singular tooth or an entire smile. You can also experiment with different words and shapes.
The great news about having a tooth logo? People automatically associate it with dentists. After all, who else is going to use a tooth for a logo?
Kid-Friendly Shapes and Symbols
Do you work with lots of kids and families?
If so, you already know how scary visiting the dentist can be for young ones. (Although it can be just as scary for adults, too!)
This is where fun animals or shapes can really make a standout logo. Your design can actually impact someone’s mood when he or she walks through your door.
Consider kid-approved animal cutouts like dinosaurs, fish, or dogs. In terms of symbols, you want to do your best to emulate feelings of happiness. These include popular symbols like flowers, the sun, or plants.
Happiness and calmness are the goals here. The image should make you feel good when you see it!
Abstract Designs
With so many shapes, color, and symbol options, making an abstract logo design is easy and fun.
Abstract logos convey a sense of modern elegance. They also convey a sense of classy minimalism, both of which represent timeless marketing trends.
With abstract designs, the sky’s the limit. Play around with different textures, lines, and symbols. Get feedback from a colleague if you’re not sure what is (or isn’t) working.
Mind the Color
Many people fear the dentist, so the experience can provoke a lot of anxiety in some patients.
This means you need to take color palettes into consideration when designing your dental office logo. The following colors are most closely associated with feelings of happiness, calmness, and serenity:
- Yellow
- Silver
- Light blue
- Light green
- Pink
- Lavender
You may want to avoid colors like black, bright orange, and red. These colors can increase feelings of fear or uneasiness.
While color doesn’t necessarily make or break a logo, it’s important to keep in mind when you start designing.
Final Thoughts on Your Dental Office Logo
Your logo is one of the first images a patient sees when he or she walks through your door.
You want the image to be inviting, captivating, and interesting. You also want it to stand out and be unique from your competition.
Ready to get started on making your perfect logo? Check out our extensive tutorial here and let’s get designing!