Openly discussing technology ethics can be a point of differentiation in your content marketing strategy. It’s a chance for you to shape the narrative, to establish trust with your audience, and to demonstrate your ability to lead your industry.
My Tech Company Needs a Brand: Getting Started with Logo Design and Visual Style
John Himes
June 21, 2024
When you think about branding for your tech startup, logo design is almost always the first thing to come to mind. Maybe you’re also thinking about other elements of visual style like colors and fonts. But, especially for technical founders, this might as well be black magic.
Perhaps you found a freelancer online who drew up a couple designs for you. Or you might have tried generating some concepts with AI, but it just doesn’t seem right. Aside from the obvious quality issues, the problem with this approach is that it asks you, the technical founder, to say exactly what it is you want your logo to look like.
The truth is that you probably have no idea what you want your branding to look like.
You know all about your technology and how it solves problems for your customers. But translating that into a logo design—both conceptually and visually—is a surprisingly daunting challenge.
At the same time, there’s a lot of pressure to get it right.
A logo is one of the cornerstones of brand identity, which is the foundation of all of your marketing materials. It’s how you’re going to build recognition and trust in the market, and it’s ultimately what’s going to lead to sales growth. And the last thing you want to do is go through a rebrand in six months.
It’s just like engineering your product. Spend a little extra time and resources nailing down the fundamentals. Don’t rush through it and take on technical debt. The same thing goes for branding.
But enough with the theory. Let’s talk about practicals for how to get started creating a brand identity for tech companies.
How to design a brand for a tech startup
Start by putting colors, fonts, and images aside; understand that a logo itself is not a brand. A brand is a conceptual identity. It’s the company’s personality. A logo is basically a face that people use to recognize that identity.
Before we start to visualize what that face looks like, we need to understand the underlying identity. Take some time to think about and discuss your company’s Core Brand Elements, which includes themes like your mission, values, differentiators, and core competencies.
From there, think about what the brand means emotionally. Is it exciting and innovative? Is it modernistic and simple? Is it stable and reliable?
During this exploratory phase, the goal is to expand the world of possibilities. Do some competitor research. Think about visual associations. Create a mood board of images that speak to you.
The next step to developing your brand aesthetics is to take all these possibilities and begin narrowing them back down. “Building a brand is like carving marble,” explains M.K. Komins, a senior graphic designer at Dynamic Tech Media. “You start with everything and then chip away at it.”
Tech company logo design
Looking specifically at logo design, the first area you want to focus on is the shape. Remember, you’re not always going to have color, so you need to make sure your logo is representative of your brand in shape alone.
Again, the shape of your logo should come out of your Core Brand Elements, and it should reflect the brand’s emotional posture. I know it’s easier said than done, but a lot of times, once you’re looking at different options, you can say, “This one looks right and this one looks wrong. Let’s focus on option A and come up with some different stylistic variations.” In this way, we chip away at it.
The last thing you want to pay close attention to is legibility in different contexts. Your logo is going to appear on your website on both desktop and mobile. It’s going to show up on your product, on printed materials, and in so many other places. It will appear on different colored backgrounds. It’s even going to have to shrink down to a tiny size to become a favicon, which is the little icon on a browser tab.
When a logo is too intricate or complex, it can become muddled or unwieldy for designers to use in these diverse situations. This is easy to miss if you haven’t been through the process before, which is why it’s such a common pitfall.
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Special considerations for tech startup branding and logo development
There are some finer points that tech companies specifically should pay attention to when designing a brand. You need to understand where you’re positioned in the industry, what type of customers you’re going after, and how disruptive or innovative—and therefore previously unknown—your technology is.
“Crafting this identity for tech companies is challenging, especially with the inherently complex technical concepts we deal with,” says Christiana Sasser, lead marketer at Vescent, a quantum technologies company that manufactures lasers and controls. “It’s about sharing our technical concepts in a way that represents who we are as a brand and business while keeping our message simple, efficient, and accessible.”
Innovators should position themselves as such, and an important part of that is conveying those innovations in a clear and concise way. So while it’s good to push the bounds a bit and use your branding to stand out from the competition, it’s also possible to overcorrect and confuse your audience.
It’s a fine line to walk.
Start with the customer. Position yourself in front of them.
Here’s a simple example. Blue is everywhere in technology branding. If you’ve ever been to a tech conference, you know what I mean. It’s a safe choice, and a lot of times there’s nothing wrong with that. It really depends on what you’re selling and who you’re selling it to. Do you want to be the safe choice or the bold choice? Which do your customers want?
Speaking of what your customers want, another common mistake is assuming that your audience likes technology as much as you do. Now, if your customers are researchers, engineers, or other nerdy types like us, then that’s one thing.
But something I see over and over again, especially in B2B, is that customers sometimes don’t really care for technology that much. They may even distrust it after being burned too many times in the past.
If that’s the case, looking too much like a young, hip, and fun Silicon Valley startup can be a huge turnoff. A lot of founders love their technology like their children, and they want to celebrate it and put it front and center in their marketing. But some buyers just aren’t ready for that; when they see software screenshots or complex diagrams, they feel pain. Marketing needs to be a celebration of your customer, not of yourself.
That’s why it’s so important for tech companies to lead with value and to position their branding around the results they create for their customers. Make it relatable and accessible. Use language and imagery that triggers an emotional response and gives customers a way to enter the story and see themselves as the hero.
Great branding starts with the foundations
Sure, it’s important to spend time and effort on your tech company’s brand visuals—from designing the logo to picking colors and fonts—but remember that these design fundamentals don’t come out of nowhere. The point isn’t just to have something pretty to look at.
Start with the basics. Begin with your Core Brand Elements and understand how your solution delivers real value to your customer. Make sure you have a clear picture of who that customer is and how they see and interact with the world.
Sometimes a fresh perspective can make all the difference. If you do want to bring in some outside expertise, make sure to pick a branding agency that caters to tech companies. Choose a partner who can help you translate tech speak into plain English and can serve as a bridge between the technologists on your side and the buyers you’re targeting, regardless of how tech savvy they are.
Dynamic Tech Media can help. And you don’t even have to contact us to see how. Download our free Core Brand Elements Template now to get started.
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DOWNLOAD THE FREE CORE BRAND ELEMENTS TEMPLATE
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