Welcome to part 3 of the Branding your Blog series! You can access parts 1, 2, and 4 at the bottom of the article. In Part 1 we talked about making a Mood Board with your chosen colors, in Part 2 we talked about The Fonts. Today, we will talk about how important your logo and header is for your brand.
What is a Logo?
A font is a symbol or graphic with or without the letter that represents a brand, and it’s core values. You see logos everywhere, every single thing that has a brand has a logo. There are iconic logos like Coca-Cola and McDonald’s. A logo is successful when it is memorable, and it can tell a story, even if it’s small with few words.
A logo for a Blog is special because it not only represents your blog, but also yourself as a person. When creating a logo for a blog, you have to think about a few things. Where will you use the logo and in how many formats do you need it?
For starters, you need it to create a Header for your blog. Secondly, you need it as a watermark and branding for your photos and graphics. Last but not least you have to be sure that your logo has a version that fits inside a circle. Why? Think social media profiles.
Kinds of Logos
There are five types of logos; wordmark, letter mark, brandmark, combination mark, and emblem. Choosing which logo to use for your blog is not so difficult, let’s review.
Wordmark
Wordmark logos only have text. Words can be turned into shapes, written in stylized fonts and altered to make lots of great designs. A lot of Blog headers are essentially wordmarks, but combination marks also work really well, see below.
Lettermark
Lettermark logos are made up of the initials of the brand name. These can also be quite stylized and sometimes quite conceptual. These can work for blogs if the name of the blog is really long and you like referring to it with the initials.
Brandmark
A brandmark logo is essentially a symbol that represents a brand. This as a standalone logo is really hard to pull off for a blog. But it isn’t a bad idea to create a symbol or icon that will complement your logo. See below for combination mark.
Combination mark
This is the best kind of logo for a blog. It is a symbol and the name of the brand together as a whole. I always suggest bloggers use this sort of logo because it’s the most versatile for all the designs that bloggers need.
Emblem
An emblem is when the logo is a symbol, but the words are inside it. It’s like a badge or stamp in style and can be very appealing, just not very versatile. Words are sometimes rounded or shaped to fit inside the symbol.
The Best Logo Combination for Bloggers
My personal opinion as a graphic designer and blogger is that when you (or a designer) create your logo, is to design a combination mark. Design or customize a bought icon that will represent your blog and also design the words of your blog into a style that fits with the icon. Once you have the icon, and the words designed, you can come things around and fit them in a rectangle, a square and over any photo you like as a branding watermark.
[clickToTweet tweet=”Everything u need to consider when creating your blog’s logo and header #BrandYourBlog #IBABloggers” quote=”A great blog logo and header will make your blog stand out from the rest”]
The Blog Header
The first thing your reader see when they visit your blog is your header. If you are just using a random font from the editor and your blog name, it can look pretty uninviting. Having a great blog header will make your blog stand out from the rest.
Transforming your logo into a blog header is not difficult at all. Actually, it’s better to work on both at the same time. The Blog Header has two parts, the title of your blog and the byline. The byline doesn’t always make it to the logo it depends on the complexity of your header and byline.
Making a Logo and Header
Just like all the design aspects of your blog, you have two choices for how to make your logo and header. You can either make them yourself or hire a designer. If you are design savvy and love creating then, you can perfectly make these yourself with design programs or online editors.
Hiring a Designer
Hiring a designer doesn’t have to be a daunting task, but there are a lot of options. My first suggestion will be to ask in your blogging facebook groups if there is a designer in the midst. It is always best to follow the law of “community over competition” in the world of blogging.
Other places to find a designer are Fiverr.com, Freelancer.com, and Behance.com. These three sites are listed in order of cost. Fiverr can get you a cheap logo but also some more expensive options if you hire a more experienced designer. Even though you might pay a bit more on Fiverr, a professional designer will most probably not be on Fiverr at all.
Another option is Freelancer where designers bid on what you need, and then you pick and pay. Freelancer has designers from amateur to professional, and it might take even longer to get what you want. Behance is the place where professional designers hang out and show their work. Their services are expensive but extremely good.
Making it Yourself
Making your own logo and header can be lots of fun if you want to go in that direction. The obvious choices for designing these is Illustrator and Photoshop if you don’t have access to Adobe programs you can sue Inkscape or Gimp. If you prefer easier online editors, you can use Picmonkey or Canva.
Canva has recently added a logo template to their editor, and it’s awesome. The only problem is that you can’t save it with a transparent background unless you have Canva for Work. I cannot vouch for Picmonkey because I don’t use it, but some bloggers swear by it.
When your own logo and header or any other designs, you need some graphic design resources like fonts, backgrounds, textures and customizable icons. There are lots of places online to download free and paid designs. Your best options are Creative Market, Pixelo, Freepik, Vecteezy, Pixabay, Dafont, freefonts, and more that you can find with a simple Google search.
Two More Things
Remember Part 2 of the series when we talked about fonts? It is ok to use the same font from your logo and header as the font for your blog post titles, but not in the actual blog theme. You can use the same font in the Blog Post Title graphics if you like, but only if the font is an easily readable one. If your logo has a special font or a font with a background, then it’s best to use another font in a similar style for the titles in your blog.
Have you wondered about the trademark and registered marks on the logos you see everywhere? You can put those on your logo too. Here are some articles for you to read about that.
Read Other Posts in this Series
Part 4 – Your Social Media – coming soon