How important is a logo when establishing your boutique’s brand identity?

Your brand identity is made up of the tools and elements you use to help guide how your customers think and feel about you. It includes your logo and its different variations, but it also has the name of your boutique, your tagline, typefaces, colour palette, the voice your boutique uses, and overall style. These individual bits and pieces are significant because together, they make up the complete picture of what it’s like to shop and work with you.

As an individual element, your logo itself is crucial. It’s kind of like a name card at a wedding – you know the seat you’re looking at is yours because your name is on it. Everything that has your logo on it is easily recognisable as yours and stands out from the rest.

A well-designed logo will allow you to place it, or a variation of, quite literally anywhere. Think outside of your boutique, on champagne flutes, repeated as a packaging pattern, even on teeny tiny labels inside wedding dresses. This means the possibilities for increasing awareness of your boutique are endless!

Where should you start when designing a logo?

Your logo design process begins way before you start thinking about logo design. By this, I mean start with your strategy! Nailing your brand strategy is the first step towards designing your logo and the rest of your brand identity. You’ll need to fully understand your business and everything it stands for, so you can effectively communicate this to your customers through visuals.

Think about your values and your purpose. What does your boutique stand for? Why do your customers enjoy the experience of working with you? Why do you enjoy your work? What does your boutique value the most?

During this process, you’ll also want to get a concrete understanding of who your target customers are and how you want them to feel when they interact with you. That way, you can understand the type of visuals you’ll need to help communicate these feelings. Base your brand strategy around emotions, and you’re onto a winner. It’s worth mentioning here that your brand strategy will be at the centre of everything you do as a boutique and not just your logo design process!

Once you’ve got your strategy down, you can start to think about your logo design. I would always recommend working with a professional designer for this part. Understanding what makes good design is like speaking another language! Did you know that designers even carefully design the negative (empty) space around your logo so that everything comes together perfectly? Colour psychology is massively important too, so best to get some advice at least.

What should you be including in your logo set?

A professional logo set will include a few different versions of your logo. You’ll need these versions:

Wide / Landscape

This is a version of your full logo that fits in spaces that are wider than they are tall. This could be the main version of your logo that you use in most places.

Tall / Portrait

This is a version of your full logo that fits in spaces that are taller than they are wide. This could also be the main version of your logo that you use in most places but choosing one main version is best.

Square / Circle

This is a version of your logo that fits in both square and circular spaces. Often these variations are designed as badges, emblems, or stamps. This may not include your full logo but will represent it cohesively.

Small / Icon

This is the smallest version of your logo for use in not so obvious places or when it’s hard to fit anything else - something like the Bridal Buyer icon at the top of your web browser. Often this will include initials or an icon only.

For each of these logo variations, you can create a full-colour version along with colourways for both light and dark backgrounds, as well as one colour use (e.g. all black or white). When you have all these variations, you’ll have the perfect set to apply to any situation whilst remaining on-brand!