Why You Should Not Design Your Own Logo

Your logo is your most powerful branding tool. It is far more than your name in pretty type or a clip art symbol in your favorite color. 

Your logo is the primary connection between your product or service and your customer or client. It’s an emotional connection that creates an instant opinion, mark of credibility, and level of confidence. 

Your logo’s emotional response is markedly affected by the psychology of color, font choice, and message.

Here are the reasons why you shouldn’t design your own logo:

1. You Probably Don’t Have The Right Tools
Logo Maker and Canva are tools, but not the right tools. The right tools are a combination of professional design software and someone who understands branding, color theory, and how the human brain responds to both color and typography. No amount of tutorials will defeat the work of a professional Graphic Designer with Adobe Creative Suite, a sizable font library and decades of experience.

2. Your Logo Signals Your Professionalism
Your logo is not your brand, but it is part of your brand. Brand is your values, the beliefs that drive your company and what makes you different. A strong brand serves as your voice and personality, and demonstrates to potential customers how they can expect to be treated. A professionally designed logo creates that signal.

3. Your Focus is Sales, Not Design
You built your business to create revenue, to make sales, to make a positive difference in your life and the lives of those you serve. Your product or service is what creates revenue. Without sales, you cannot invest in design. So, build your business and run your business with fierce determination and let the professionals handle the design aspects.

“BRANDING is strategic. MARKETING is tactical. 
MARKETING may contribute to a BRAND, but the BRAND is bigger than any particular MARKETING effort.” 

—James Heaton, Brand Strategist

A logo that was once modern and compelling can lose its power over time, or refuse to adapt to a digital world. If outdated, there can exist a perception that an organization is out-of-touch. Perhaps your values have changed over time, or the original logo needs to be simplified. Or maybe, your brand simply needs a gentle kick in the pants to meet today’s competitive landscape. 

If you recognize that your branding no longer reflects your company’s values, or it just feels out of date, you’ve already taken that first step forward. We offer no-obligation written assessments of your current brand. You have nothing to lose, except more business!

Why We Like Human-Centered Design

Human-Centered Design is a creative approach that serves as the backbone of what we do at ActiveCanvas — design for the people you serve. 

Basically, it’s a design process, or framework, we use to develop solutions to problems from the human perspective. It focuses on the users of your product or service, rather than merely describe who you are, what you offer, and why people should care.

Most businesses work very hard at describing what they do, how long they’ve done it, and what people say about them. A human-centered design approach focuses on solving problems and presenting solutions. From our perspective, human-centered design is about building a deep empathy with the people for whom you’re designing and for the people you serve. It takes a bit longer to generate ideas, build prototypes, write copy, edit (then write even better copy) and search for just the right imagery and palettes. It means generating tons of ideas; sharing what we’ve made with you to be sure we’re on the right track; and eventually putting words, images, and solutions out to the world.

There are three phases:

  1. Inspiration. We listen to you describe the relationship you want considering your idea of success, your product/service, and the needs and wants of the people you most desire as customers.
  2. Ideation. Based on all that we learned, we now write descriptive copy, do a little story-branding, research your competitors and identify opportunities for design and solutions.
  3. Implementation. After we share what we’ve learned and you approve the look, feel, content, direction, and solutions we put on the table, we bring it all to life using custom designs, real coding, brilliant copy, and beautiful images.

We know our design process will be a success because we’ve kept the very people you want to serve at the center of the process. Could human-centered design be good for your business? Let’s have a conversation.

Color Trends for 2019

The two top trends for digital design in 2019 are bright spots of color and a new “minimalist look using bright colors, multi-colored gradients, or dark-colored overlays to help a text message pop in an increasingly crowded space.

So what does this mean for you and your brand? Unless you are due for a website makeover, spend a good amount of time marketing on social media, producing graphics for videos, or planning event mailers, probably very little. However, if you do have these things in mind, there’s some science behind new trends, so it pays to know what the experts are saying.

The new trends in digital are bright colors and overlays, like this monotone image with a bright color overlay.


Bright spots of color get you noticed in a crowded space, and color or dark-colored overlays help those bright color spots pop.

The symmetrical website is shaping up to be asymmetrical, and sometimes, without any color at all.

Bright colors aren’t suitable for every business, but we recommend their use with caution backed by purpose.

We don’t advocate altering your brand to keep up with trends — but a refreshing pop of bright color here and there when the message and marketing channel can support it? Ok! It can put a smile on your face and get you noticed.  


Pantone’s 2019 Color of the Year: Living Coral

Pantone says, “In reaction to the onslaught of digital technology and social media increasingly embedding into daily life, we are seeking authentic and immersive experiences that enable connection and intimacy. Sociable and spirited, the engaging nature of Pantone 16-1546 Living Coral welcomes and encourages lighthearted activity and serves as a symbol of our innate need for optimism, joyful pursuits, embodies our desire for playful expression.”