How to Design a Logo for Your Restaurant

A logo is a visual restaurant symbol that is used to attain recognition by potential customers. It is also a recognizable mark that is meant to represent your business everywhere and to everyone. From your signage to your menu, and of course your website, your restaurant logo design makes an impression among people. The logo should also be used to represent your restaurant on social media. It should be the avatar image on your Facebook, Twitter and Instagram account. Unfortunately, many dining establishments don’t include their restaurant names and logos on their websites as they mistakenly undermine their business potentials.

People go to restaurants with expectations of having an enjoyable dining experience contributed by great food and services. The ambience can create memorable moments patrons spend with family and friends and restaurants. Despite of that, restaurateurs abruptly close their business or they are not satisfied with its performance. Failure is mostly due to lack of adherence to the basic principles of running a restaurant and consequently losing their clientele base to competition.

Many restaurant owners make a false presumption that serving good quality food is all that it takes to run a lucrative business. While good quality services and products are necessary components to a successful business venture, creating a brand that people can trust is equally important. The mere facts that logos are overlooked and even dismissed are accounted for the failure rate in the restaurant industry which is very high. Since a logo is a virtual identity of a business and conveys a brand message to your targeted customers, conceptualizing a professional logo design is not less crucial than formulating a layout design plan for your restaurant.

While learning how to design a logo takes skill, it is not difficult to learn. But before you start thinking about a visual imagery for your logo in regards to the colors and fonts you want to use, you need to develop a plan for your brand. The restaurant concept and brand personality are foundations that build a consistent brand to be put out in the marketplace. If you just started to work on brand touch points without a solid plan set in place, your restaurant’s image will resemble more like a random patchwork quilt thus making it difficult for you to create and promote your brand. Hence, the design on your logo should reflect the nature of your business, your restaurant’s character, and the ambiance.

The last thing you should want is for your business to look like a second rate version of your competition by copying from their logo design. Identifying the competitors in your category and service area can prevent you from making such a careless blunder. Reviewing their logos can shed some insight of where you stand in the market. From there, you can sort through logo design ideas and inspirations and determine which works best for your business. This method will ensure the uniqueness and originality of your logo so that is doesn’t resemble that of your competitors which can confuse patrons and potentially summon litigations from them – another headache can only do more damage than justice to your restaurant.

Unless you have a strong design background and the time to customize your logo to your specifications, a lot of restaurateurs prefer to employ professional designers to create a brand mark and logo based on your research and restaurant name. If budget and time constraints are a factor, there are many affordable ways to find help with your logo design. Even if you decide to hire help, you may still need to improve some basics about type, layout, color scheme, and production. Understanding the basics will make these logo design projects much easier to undertake and accomplish.

Though a logo design might seem effortless to some, the process itself takes many hours of brainstorming, planning, setting expectations and deadlines. If you decide to recruit a designer, it’s important that both of you are on the same page in terms of communication and having an open and honest dialogue. You should evaluate their work and determine whether their style meets or conflicts with your standards. When the gap between styles and tastes are wide, it can derail the designer/client relationship as well as your project. The better the instructions you give to your designer, the greater the impact it will have on your logo.

This reiterates the point of having a clear understanding of your brand and how you want your logo to represent your restaurant. A restaurant logo should be unique in its design and concept. A logo should not feature cliché elements. The designer should be experienced and creative enough to make a logo that is exciting, engaging which can be used as a business tool to drive customers. If you are a bar owner, for instance, the bar design should be incorporated into your logo – a design that speaks to the target customers. A designer can present templates and ideas to you but if you are neither outspoken nor direct about your needs, you will run into a lot of misunderstandings and communication roadblocks.. Providing your designer with a blueprint about the project with clear objectives, expectations and deadlines can make the process go a whole lot smoother. Ultimately, a logo design should be versatile and flexible with considerations to take into such as how it interacts with the rest of the brand experience.