Your logo needs to stand out, so people take notice of your company.

When starting a company and developing its corporate identity you need to come up with its name, colour scheme, slogan, and its quite often the logo is forgotten about, and not enough attention is spent on developing the ideas. For a successful logo, follow the tips below:

1. Firstly, you need to plan your logo. The idea is that it should  reflect the companies style and beliefs. I would recommend brain storming about your company, what it does, what services it provides, and key products. This way you are clear what you would like to reflect in the logo.

2. The logo has to look good on a large advertising poster, or on a small business card, which means it has to be clear and precise. Be very careful when using text, it MUST be readable on small scale logos.

3. Next, the colour scheme, this cant is just what colours you like at the time, they need to make sense. .Study corporate colours, try trying different shades, what colours look good together, and what ones clash. You should aim for a maximum of 12 colours, but aiming to have two main colours. The thing to steer clear of are very dark colours unless relevant to your business.

4. Make sure the colours are right for the target audience, older people do not particularly bright adventurous colours, something simpler would suit them better.

5. Simplicity is the key to the design. The biggest and best companies in the world have the simplest logos. Stick with clean clear lines.

6. Be individual, try not the take ideas from rival companies, stand out and be different, it's the only way you will get noticed.

7. A good idea to research others competitors logos. Type your key word, eg. "bikes" into google with the word "logo", it will give you lots of logos of your competitors.

8. Also, by doing this searching technique, it will teach you to recognise good designs and disastrous ones, you will automatically look at the good ones as they will be eye catching and clear.

9. Active development. It is now time to stop researching and actually do some work. Get out your sketch pad and start designing; however, bare in mind the previous tips! Design at least 20 rough sketches before you pick a couple to develop further.

10. Opinions count. Ask friends, family, people in the business and complete strangers to look at your designs to decide which ones work, and which don't and why. You will get a better understanding of what the public like. Remember to listen to what people have to say about your plans and you may gain knowledge about your logos.

11. Now you have collected data from people, you should change and develop each design to what they said, change colours, lines, curve the edges, generally listen and take note of the criticism you received.

12. Now you have a good logo design, employ a professional designer or printer to finish the job off. They will reproduce your logo to a high quality using computer programmes. At the end of the day, your logo needs to look professional. 

 Congratulations, you should be the proud owner of a effective logo designed by you for your business.