As a managed service provider, you’re well aware of the fact that there’s a lot of confusion surrounding what your company has to offer other businesses.

Your job is to make life easier for businesses in a wide variety of industries by offering things like cloud-based web hosting services, general IT services, assistance with payroll and compliance, and much more.

Looking for a better way to instantly let leads know exactly what you have to offer?

The right cloud logo design can help to clear up any confusion when it comes to the specific services you provide.

So, what makes a strong cloud logo design?

Keep on reading this post to find out.

1. Minimalism Matters

The first thing that you need to keep in mind when you’re dreaming up your cloud logo design?

As a managed service provider, it’s your goal to increase the operating efficiency of the businesses you work with. You want to make it easier for them to find the files they need, and to ensure that they have a safe and secure space to both store and access their data.

What doesn’t communicate that?

A cluttered, over-the-top cloud logo design.

Especially in the world of cloud-based services, simplicity is key.

We strongly suggest using no more than three colors in your entire logo design — and less if you can help it. Your central image should be crisp, include lots of white space, and should be easy to replicate on a variety of surfaces.

Avoid anything that suggests digital clutter. This includes hard-to-read fonts, overly detailed images, and clashing colors. This will only hurt your business.

2. Avoid Cliches When Designing Logos with Clouds

As a primarily cloud-based business, we know that it can be a serious challenge to make sure that your leads know what you have to offer without creating a cloud logo that looks like a carbon copy of your competitors’.

While your logo will likely include some sort of cloud image, there are lots of ways that you can breathe new life into the design.

First of all, remember that you can place your text inside the cloud. You could also place images of gears, a computer desktop, or even a lock inside the cloud.

This helps to separate you from other businesses in your industry. It also suggests to customers that your cloud is a protective space for their data.

Avoid having raindrops or fog leaking from the cloud, as this can quickly call to mind security breaches and a loss of data.

You can also use unconventional colors for your cloud — in other words, there’s more to good design than blue cloud logos!

Use the psychology of color to help you decide on a hue that will best pique the interests of your target market.

Finally, if you’re ready to think outside the cloud image, try an interlocking shape of your own creation. Things like a three-dimensional box, an octagon, or even a circle will still hint at a sense of protection but will be a bit less common.

3. Aim For Visual Balance

Scalability is key in logo design — but so is ensuring that there’s a strong visual balance within all the elements of your design.

If you have a tagline, is it properly centered underneath your company name and central image? Is your central image in proper balance with the size of your font, or does it seem to overwhelm the entire design?

Discover more about how to create a logo design with the right visual balance by looking on the Jaguar PC website. First of all, their logo design uses two colors to ensure that the design is easy to read.

But we especially love the look of the “g,” which is unique enough to immediately imprint on the minds of potential customers. Plus, the orange hue of the logo communicates a sense of authority and dominance.

This design can also easily be adjusted when it comes to size and scale — so it will never end up looking cramped or cluttered.

This is the perfect example to draw inspiration from when creating your own design.

4. Keep It Current

Finally, especially in the world of managed service providers, your cloud logo needs to communicate to customers that you’re with the times.

The last thing that you want is for an outdated logo to make potential clients think that your services also haven’t been updated in a while.

When you’re designing your logo, make sure that it gives you opportunities to update the design in the future. Make sure updating doesn’t compromise your branding.

For example, think about how Apple consistently changes the color of its logo to account for trends and announce new products. What about how Google changes its homepage and font design to celebrate holidays?

Your logo design should possess the flexibility to be able to do the same.

Ready to Create the Perfect Cloud Logo?

We hope that this post has made it easy to understand the essential elements that a compelling cloud logo should contain.

Remember to focus on creating balance in your cloud logo design, and to ensure that your logo can be updated as your company grows.

Looking to dream up a few potential designs?

Use our simple logo design tool to make it happen.

Then, continue coming back to us for more invaluable design and branding advice that will help your managed service provider business to make it to the big leagues.

We can’t wait to see what you accomplish next.

Dining outside of the home has become one of America’s favorite commodities. In fact, the average household spends over $3000 a year at restaurants, which is a huge chunk of salary.

The market is hot and ready for restaurants to succeed. But, you do have to be aware of how steep your competition is. The restaurant industry is actually quite over-saturated, making it hard to captivate new diners.

You have to deliver more than just quality food. Everything from your aesthetic to your brand needs to be on point at all times. Let’s focus on the latter, as branding is imperative to the success of all businesses.

When building a brand, a logo is a great place to start. It gives customers an eye into your company while telling a unique story. These 7 restaurant logo designs will give you inspiration for your own product.

1. Olive Garden

Everyone’s favorite chain Italian restaurant can teach us a bit about color appropriation. When designing a logo, you need to keep in mind how well your color scheme works together.

Olive Garden makes use of an olive green, which is often associated with Italian culture. Many Italian restaurants use this dark green or even a red to emphasize their flair. We indirectly ascribe meanings to colors, which is why greens and blues send different messages than pinks and purples.

What colors can help an audience resonate with your brand? If you’re a fast food restaurant, you may consider red or orange, as they allude to joy and speediness. A more high-end restaurant should consider a purple, black, or white.

2. Cracker Barrel

Cracker Barrel is a perfect example of how to use imagery to tell a story. You see an elder man leaning against a barrel, with the words “Old Country Story” in the center. This is because Cracker Barrel started as a small country store long ago.

So, how can you capture your own story? A good place to start is to consider why your audience chooses you over other restaurants. Are you freaky fast? Family-friendly? Fresh? Finger licking good?

Use an anecdotic to drive home what your brand sells. Finding a unique selling proposition is essential to finding brand identity.

3. Denny’s

What makes America’s favorite diner so ubiquitous in mainstream culture? No, it’s not that you can find one at nearly any exit off the freeway.

It’s how Denny’s props itself as an iconic brand that withstands through time. Part of its timeless appeal comes from its typeface logo, that only states the company’s name.

It’s not fancy or gaudy. It’s not overly decorative or complex. It doesn’t get crazy with colors or symbols. It simply states ‘Denny’s’ in a bold, red font with a yellow background.

This is one of the best examples on how to keep a logo simple, yet expressive. Sometimes the most creative logos aren’t the ones that are so in-your-face.

4. Oodles Noodle Bar

You’re probably not familiar with this Thai-influenced cafe unless you live in Seattle. But, Oodles can teach us all about getting creative with a logo through balanced shapes.

It’s advised to not use unfamiliar shapes when designing a logo, as it’ll confuse your audience. Instead, go with a symbol that is recognizable, and that ties your brand neatly together.

As a noodle bar, it makes sense why Oodles chose two chopsticks and a bowl in its logo. They took their creativity one step further by situating their main offering in the middle of the image. It’s familiar, yet innovative, and leaves no confusion amongst consumers.

5. Bottle + Kitchen

Another restaurant that’s probably unbeknownst to you is Bottle + Kitchen, an American gastropub based out of Portland. What makes this logo so special? Despite having a mix of different shapes, Bottle + Kitchen keeps a clean, symmetrical look.

Having a symmetrical logo doesn’t always mean you’re going to have a balance of shapes on each side. What’s important is optimizing the space, so one side isn’t filled while the other is completely blank.

You can measure this by imagining a rectangle or circle surrounding your logo. Would the edges of your logo meet the outer part of the encompassing shape? This can also help if you need better alignment.

6. Wendy’s

Since Dave Thomas opened this iconic burger chain in 1969, his redheaded daughter has been apart of the logo. Not only was the founder a family oriented man, but he also prided himself in old-fashioned values.

This logo exemplifies all of those qualities. Despite being one of the largest burger chains in America, we still get that homegrown feel from the Wendy’s logo. The inclusion of Thomas’ daughter has resonated so well because it sends that unique message.

We feel confident in the product we’re getting because of that family tie. This is the type of differentiator brands should look for to set themselves apart.

7. Roka Akor

You can find Roka Akor throughout Scottsdale, Chicago, and San Francisco. It’s a luxurious, award-winning sushi and seafood brand whose logo says just that.

Their logo is neatly tied together with a discernible black font and modern Japanese typeface. There isn’t a ton of words, symbols, or other shapes, which keeps it from looking cluttered. Still, when you see this logo, you can tell the message it’s trying to convey.

Sometimes familiarity isn’t such a bad thing, and Roka Akor uses this to their advantage. We get the feel that it’s an elegant restaurant, and it’s uniqueness still shows through expressive font.

In Need of a Restaurant Logo?

Designing your own restaurant logo doesn’t have to be so challenging. With our easy-to-use logo maker, you can become your very own graphic designer!

Get started by registering with us today!

If you need to design a clothing company logo, where do you begin?

A lot of different things go into creating a new logo or redesigning an old one. The clothing business is competitive, and a logo matters. Eight years ago, Gap attempted to redesign its classic logo with disastrous results.

It cost the company millions in design costs, focus groups, and bad press. The company underestimated the attachment people had to its logo, and the reaction was so strong, the company reverted to its old logo just a few days later.

That’s the potential impact your clothing logo has on your customers. How do you design a logo that stands out from the crowd? Read on to find out.

The Most Important Step Isn’t The Design

You’ll be surprised to learn that the most important step in designing a logo isn’t designing the logo itself, but rather the planning and research that happens beforehand.

What you learn in the research and planning phase will inform your designs, and actually, make it easier to apply design principles because you know exactly the look and feel you want to create.

Before you start designing, you have to have in-depth knowledge of two things: your company and your customers.

Knowing Your Company

We’re not looking at sales figures or anything like that. Rather, we’re going to look at your company’s vision and mission. You want to make sure that the reason why your company exists aligns with your company’s brand and your customers.

If your company’s mission is to create upscale business clothing for older women, you want to be sure that your logo and brand reflect that.

One easy way to go about this is to describe your clothing company as a person. Is it a man or a woman? What do they wear? What do they drive? What is a typical day like? Treating your company as a person will help you describe what your company is about.

Once you know why your company exists, you want to be able to describe the brand’s promise in a few words. For example, Nike’s mission and brand promise are to “bring innovation and inspiration to every athlete.”

Volvo’s is to make driving safer. What does your company promise its customers?

Who Are Your Customers?

When you have your company’s mission and brand promise down, you want to make sure that you understand your customers as well.

When they’re looking at different clothing companies, what do they want? Are they shopping for value or status?

You need to be sure that your customers’ expectations line up with your brand promise. That’s how you’ll create loyal customers who are attached to your brand.

Know What Makes Good (and Bad) Design

When you’re designing your clothing company logo, you have to know what goes into a good and bad design. When people look at a logo, they subconsciously process the colors, fonts, shapes, and symbols to create meaning.

Those meanings may vary across cultures, which is why it’s so important to know your audience. If your customers are largely based in the U.S. and Canada, they’ll perceive colors and symbols the same way.

Color

Color is one of the bigger impacts on design. Different colors are processed in the brain and they have psychological associations with different emotions.

Blue is used throughout many classic brands. Blue is associated with safety, reliability, and security. That’s why so many companies from IBM to Gap use it.

Black is a color of power, mystery, and strength. It’s used a lot in retail for this reason. Black can also be associated with sadness and death, so you have to be careful about how you use it and the color combinations you use.

Font

The fonts that you use also have an impact. Block fonts tend to convey something that’s bold or strong. Retro fonts can take people back to another time, as their childhood.

Some fonts are playful, and others are more conservative. You want to choose a font that matches your clothing brand’s promise.

A good example is a logo for this company. They sell modern clothing, and the fonts chosen reflect that.

Symbols

Even the symbols and lines that you use in your logo have an effect on people. A round logo can be seen as warm or soft. A logo with direct lines has the perception of durability and reliability.

The question for you is how approachable is your brand? Do you want to be seen as reliable or flexible?

You can do additional research to scope out what your competition has for a logo. Note what fonts they use and what they’re trying to communicate with their logos. You can use this as an opportunity to position your clothing company in a way that the competition doesn’t.

Doing competitive research gives you additional inspiration before you design your logo.

Designing Your Logo

You’re finally ready to start designing your logo. You want to start by brainstorming ideas and designing different versions of your clothing company logo. This is actually the easy part when you take the time to do research into your company, your competition, and your target audience.

You can describe exactly what you want your logo to accomplish, and you can test your logo to make sure it does that.

Print out several versions of your logo and ask potential customers and current customers what they think. You can also check with your employees.

Once you test out your logo, you should have one that stands out more than the others. That’s the final version you should go with.

A Clothing Company Logo That Stands Out

When you’re designing a clothing company logo, you have to take the time to research and plan before you start to design. Those are the most important steps you can take because those steps will inform the rest of your design.

You can then apply the principles of design to connect with your customers and create an unforgettable logo and brand that people can relate to.

Once you do those things, the rest is easy, just brainstorm your ideas, test them, choose the one that works best.

Are you ready to get started? You can start designing your logo using our online tool today.

Creating a memorable logo is one of the most important aspects for any new company trying to stand out in a competitive marketplace.

This is especially true in newly developing industries because no brand stands out in the minds of customers.

In the cannabis industry, the worst companies will make an obvious and boring cannabis logo that just uses an overused image, such as the marijuana leaf.

If you want a great logo that stands out, follow the steps below.

1. Simplify Your Brand

We get it. You love your company and believe in the product or service. But potential customers don’t know anything about it and will compare you to your competitors during their searches.

If your company just comes across as a company that does/sells “cannabis stuff”, it won’t be nearly as effective as a competitor with a direct message.

For example, imagine two companies make edibles. Company A’s logo is a graphic illustration of the cannabis leaf while company B’s logo is a chef holding a cookie with a cannabis leaf on his apron.

Neither logo is particularly original, but at least with company B, it’s obvious they sell edibles. Potential customers will instantly understand what they offer and will see company B as a specialist rather than a general cannabis store. The more info you can communicate in the logo the better.

But before even sketching your logo, make sure you can condense what your company offers to its customers down to just one or two words.

Even if it’s abstract like “relaxation” or “comfort”, these will help inform the look and feel of your design.

2. Understand Your Customers

Another mistake new companies make is to generalize their customers. E.g. “our customers like to get high for both medical and recreational purposes.”

This statement is too obvious and applies to almost every cannabis company. What is it specifically that customers will get from your company that they can’t get better anywhere else?

Is it the variety of choice? The quality of ingredients? The safety of your products? Once you narrow this down, you can then start thinking of your customers in a more specific and personal way.

For example, if your company is focused on the safety of your products, you will describe your customers as “people new to cannabis who are both curious and anxious about trying it. They are tired of pills and medicine and want to try something new but they are afraid of ‘bad trips’.”

This is a far more in-depth belief about who your customers are that will not only shape your logo but the entire way your company communicates and talks about itself to others.

In this example, a logo that looks more medical and professional may be better suited than one that looks casual and fun.

3. Search the Internet

Once you have a good idea about what you want to communicate, start searching the internet for existing logos and images for inspiration.

This is essential to make sure you don’t copy another company and also to ensure your logo will be truly different and stand out.

A good method is to save images and logos you like while making a note about what it is you like about it. From the color scheme and simplicity to the art style or the font, whatever stands out to you probably stands out to their customers too.

It’s important to know that it is perfectly normal for professional designers to draw inspiration and use elements from different logos to make their own.

The end result just needs to be unique and communicate what your company offers.

4. Create a Table

A good technique to help you think outside the box and create something visually different is to create a table that lists all the most important elements of your company.

For example, the edibles company could make individual columns with the headers: Cannabis, Food, Healthy, Safe, Delicious, Relief.

You then try and find (or draw) as many different images and words to represent that element. At this stage, there are no ‘wrong’ or ‘stupid’ ideas because you never know when a dumb thought could inspire something interesting. Just do as many variations as you can.

The point is to help you see that there are many different ways to represent the same thing and the more time you put into this step, the more options you will end up with.

5. Start With Pencil and Paper

Most of the world’s top designers will still start all their preliminary ideas as rough sketches because it is easy and fast.

You can start something, hate it, and start drawing something else. You can sketch minor improvements and variations quickly without worrying about quality.

You may even come back to the design you hated later and think of an interesting way to improve it.

When you make something on a computer, it’s too tempting to see it as the final design and minor changes can sometimes take much longer than you expect, which wastes time. You’re also tempted to delete designs you don’t like to keep the page clear, meaning you may miss out on a cool idea later on.

Once you have some sketches you want to try out, you can follow our tutorial to learn how to make your own logo.

6. Play With the Components

When designing a logo, it’s normal to get stuck on a few concepts or ideas and struggle to come up with something else.

When this happens, it helps to try changing how you approach the design as a whole by breaking it into components to change or combine.

For example, some logos are a design with a relevant font spelling out the company name. Other logos bring the company name into the design itself. Some even combine this by involving the design into a letter (often the first) within the name. Others are purely a unique font style that speaks to the overall tone of the company.

Try different combinations or leaving everything the same and changing just one thing. This will help you create more designs and options to work with.

7. Make it Scale

In our digital world, there are endless screen sizes people will view your content from. Because of this, website designers have created responsive sites that can shrink to mobile or enlarge to a PC without the design and spacing of the content being cut off.

From this movement, companies have begun creating logos which can be both long and short.

The easiest example of this is McDonald’s. When they have space they can show the entire McDonald’s name spelled out. If they want to save space, however, the logo can get smaller until it changes to just the recognizable yellow ‘M’.

This is effective because it prevents you from making a logo that is too complicated. The more simple it is, the easier it is for people to remember.

8. Show Your Cannabis Logo to Others

It’s perfectly normal to spend so long thinking about something that you end up with designs which make perfect sense to you but are completely lost on others seeing it for the first time.

That’s why you should make three to five options and show them to as many friends and family members as you can.

Don’t explain the logo at first, so you can get their genuine initial reaction and thoughts.

It will likely reveal problems you never thought of or even new ideas to improve what you have. Just make sure to only make changes that came up multiple times. If only one person didn’t like the color then you don’t have to change it if you don’t agree with them.

Ideally, you will be able to show your logo to a stranger and they will be able to tell you a roughly accurate depiction of what your company does or offers.

Have Fun With It

The creative process is both fun and frustrating. When coming up with your cannabis logo, just remember that there’s nothing wrong with being stuck or feeling like your ideas are terrible.

Often, those moments are the best time to try something stupid and silly to help remind you to have fun. And you never know, that cannabis leaf punching a bear in the face may spur an awesome logo idea.

However, if you’re concerned about your design skills, read our blog about paying for a designer.