To grab the attention of users and win market share, your app has to be perfect in everything. And the logo greets the user in the app store, sits on their desktop, and accompanies them the whole time they’re working with the product in the first place. In this article, we’ll discuss what an app logo is, why it’s important, and what the steps are for creating one.
You can develop a logo for the application in the online logo maker Turbologo.
Table of Contents
What is an application logo?
A logo is a visual representation of your product, it should not only look nice and stand out wherever it’s used, but it should also convey the main essence of your app. It’s an extremely important element that affects the success of a company.
Why is an app icon important?
What does the human brain process faster: images or text? The correct answer is images. Visuals are processed much faster than text. In other words, when a user encounters your app, its logo will be one of the first elements they notice. The logo’s job is to pique the user’s interest and convince them that the mobile program is trustworthy and can solve their current needs.
Stages of creating a logo for the app
Step 1: Concept
Here are three rules to follow when developing a design idea for the perfect app logo:
- Focus on your audience. For a logo to work as a marketing tool that increases downloads, it must be appealing to your target audience. This should be reflected in the colors, template, and overall design.
- Be authentic. You’re unlikely to enhance your brand and stand out if your logo looks like your competitor’s. Moreover, a bad logo that doesn’t match your brand can confuse users and alienate customers.
- Describe your product using visual language. The logo should tell a story about your app. Create a list of descriptive keywords and brainstorm with your team on how to represent those keywords in the form of symbols or pictures. They can be the basis for designing the best logo
Step 2: Platform Recommendations
When creating an application logo, be sure to adhere to the interface of the operating system itself and its accepted norms. In other words, you must be authentic and conform to the standards of the platform and its app store.
Both iOS and Android have developed a certain set of rules regarding templates, style, layouts, etc. Different rules don’t mean that you necessarily need to design different logos for each OS. Creating a single design and tweaking it can save time, money, and effort.
Step 3: Design
According to some reports, one in five millennials is willing to delete an app because of an unattractive logo (not to mention how many people will refuse to install it because of an unattractive logo). With that in mind, a beautiful and pleasing image for your product is probably just as important as proper functionality.
Here are some tips that are important to consider as early as the design phase of the image itself:
- Keep scalability in mind. The logo represents the app almost everywhere (in the store, on the home screen, in the task manager, in notifications). Consequently, its size will vary, and you need to make sure it looks good anywhere.
- Although the loss of detail in different sizes is inevitable, the clarity and original idea should be preserved. Also, the app logo should be optimized for different devices. Different tools allow you to see how the logo will look in any given format.
- Keep details to a minimum. The logo should be symbolic. The best way to achieve the desired result is to keep the amount of detail used in the design to a minimum. After all, simplicity is the key to success. A simple design conveys a clear message and also fits into the current trend of minimalism in design. Also, a simple logo helps reduce confusion among your users. The simpler the design, the easier it is to understand. You can choose one symbolic element and make it the centerpiece of the final logo design.
- Be unique and recognizable. First, a unique image is recognizable. It evokes an emotional connection with your users. Second, uniqueness gives you a competitive advantage. You are unlikely to want to use the same patterns and colors that other developers use. Avoid copy; consumers today value authenticity. They don’t want to deal with replicas or pirated copies.
- Choose your colors carefully. Needless to say, colors affect overall perception. Color can speak volumes and appeal to the human subconscious.
- Prefer symbols to text. You don’t need text to make an app logo clear or to talk about your product. You can eschew text and speak through symbols and images that embody your brand identity. However, if you still want to use text, keep it to a minimum. You can insert the name of the application if it’s short, like the BBC, for example. In any other case, it’s better to limit the text to a single letter. For example, Skype uses the letter «S» and Facebook uses the letter «F.» Adding too much text impairs the readability of the logo, and it will become unreadable in small sizes.
- Be informative. An effective logo can provide context about the functionality of your app. For example, an e-commerce app might have a shopping bag to represent purchases, a reading app might have a book, a music app might have a musical note, and a fitness app might have a flame to represent burning calories. Visit Here
Step 4: Testing
The path to the perfect logo that attracts and retains users is found solely through testing. Without feedback, you can’t be sure that your logo works as intended and reaches its maximum.
During testing, you need to create several design variations and test them. Android developers can use Google Experiments on Google Play, which allows them to test different elements of the app page, including the logo. iOS developers can use Facebook or related services for A/B testing.
Keep in mind that due to audience differences, the best-performing logos on Google Play may be less effective on the App Store, and vice versa. As mentioned above, you don’t have to create different designs for iOS and Android. But it’s better to test different options in their respective app stores to understand which ones work better.
The logo is the beginning of success
Today, the logo is an integral part of brand identity and the first point of contact between your app and the user. It plays a key role in attracting the user’s attention to your mobile product. Moreover, it is the perfect tool to present your functionality and convey your brand message before users even open your app.