Design your way

We usually encounter heart logo design on products and services related to love and romance, but that doesn’t exclude the possibility to see a heart logo design applied in unexpected locations.

In fact, heart brand logos work great for many types of businesses, due to the positive and personalized vibe they introduce.

A heart logo is commonly associated to wellness and health, and works ideally for photographers specialized in preserving family memories and personal events.

You will also see it promoting nurturing institutions and charities, day care centers, and luxurious resorts.

Why are heart logos so popular? For starters, they have an appealing shape that awakens positive feelings, and which we all associate with connotations of life and love. Hearts are simply timeless design elements.

At the dawn of the 20^th century, however, I heart logo designs lost some of their immense popularity, as by the time they were appearing almost everywhere, including poor trademarks and suspicious-quality brands.

They remerged in 1977, when Milton Glaser introduced the ultimate “I ♥ NY” mark, and imitators soon found their way around it, making this symbol work outside the US.

At the moment, the Patent and Trademark Office reports more than 1,400 “I ♥” trademarks registered around the world.

1200px-I_Love_New_York.svg_ Heart Logo Design: Inspiration and Brands That Use It

The reason why there are so many designers struggling to come up with the perfect heart logo is that they’re aware of the potential of this amazingly simple symbol.

They’ve come up with tones of clever elaborations, as for instance transforming the heart into an alphabet letter, and using it within a word mark.

Since the shape is also very versatile, it can be modified to resemble a minimum of 8 letters (a, b, c, m, o, u, v, and y). In fact, in almost 4 % of all heart-inspired logos, hearts are used as pictorial elements that replace some of these letters (Emblemetric analysis, 2013).

The striking number of heart logos crafted for all purposes and uses obviously has its downsides: as attractive as it sounds to craft heart-fingerprint logos, or pawprint and handshake hearts, you may want to reconsider your decision.

The design market has been overwhelmed by hearts for many years in a row, headed by companies such as CVS Health, Airbnb, Southwest Airlines, or Thomas Cook which all made the effort of creating a unique logo.

For them, hearts are a way to indicate positivity and friendliness, in particular when used on social networks such as Periscope and Instagram.

Even Twitter switched its star favorites to heart-shaped likes, detaching the symbols’ traditional meaning from ‘wow’ to all possible interpretations.

Heats were and remain the most used emoticons, and appear even in plain text constructions formed with <3.

A recent USPTO study revealed that the intense creating of heart-inspired logos is nowhere close to an end and it will only grow in number as time goes by.

In 1989, heart logos wrapped up to only 1.74% of all US creations (and even declined to 0.95% in 2000), but reached 2.25% by the end of 2013.

The sharp incline was caused by many different factors and reasons, but some professionals attribute it to the 2001 terrorist attacks that changed both the feelings and expectations of US audiences.

In a similar fashion, the use of heart logos in the corporate world aims to unveil the caring side of a business, and leaves an open door for customers to identify with a brand, and interpret it in their own way. Due to the large number of ideas and available solutions, finding the right logo won’t be that difficult.

Colours will make or break your heart logo design

All professional logo designers will agree on one thing: the wrong choice of colours can ruin even the best crafted logo.

Without the appropriate knowledge, we’d probably hang on the first colour that looks nice, but we’d be underestimating the multiple roles and uses of this important design element, and its effects on human psychology. To do things right, we’d first need a bit of research.

Colour psychology is not a complex process, but many designers neglect it: for the human mind, colours are indicators of particular features, which is why we associate red with love, or green with nature.

Would a Cupid heart look nice in green? Wouldn’t it confuse you, knowing that Cupid hearts usually come in red? A designer must take all these aspects into the consideration, and give viewers what they expect, rather than confusing them.

Logos that stimulate the brain

A properly crafted logo is easy to understand, but nonetheless puts our brain in action. Each logo is supposed to convey a message in a creative way, and it is important that we will be able to decipher that message or dual meaning of supposedly simple elements.

The smart use of fonts, colours, and negative spaces is a proper art on its own, and challenges viewers to identify the tricks and learn more about a brand.

How to design a medical logo – a guide for beginners

Logos are crucial branding elements for all industries, in particular the medical and healthcare one. Without experience in brand positioning, it may be very difficult to attract customers and build up a proper marketing strategy.

Further on, we will share few tips on how to create a great medical logo, and use it to bring patients along your way, balance trends and professionalism, and showcase the quality of your services.

Professional medical logos

All logo designers should keep up the innovative spirit, and follow trends that could help them attract customers from the millennial market.

In the healthcare industry, in particular, it makes a lot of sense to create a personalized font or craft logos with hand-drawn images. Yet, this doesn’t mean you should let creativity loose and promote an office with a hipster design – on the opposite, you should narrow ideas down to subtle colours and professional typography.

The challenge is: How do you keep a medical logo modern and up-to-date, without making it look unprofessional?

It will be difficult, but not impossible. The hottest trend in design is minimalism whose multitude of benefits promises to keep it on the throne for a long time to come. A minimalist logo appeals to broader audiences, but targets in particular patients following recent trends and innovations.

And while it sounds a bit strange to put ‘medical’ and ‘trendy’ in the same sentence, it may as well be the reason why customers would give your brand a second look. It may turn out that they appreciate your effort on using the latest technology, and they expect your office to be welcoming, clean, and comfortable.

Odds are good you wouldn’t expect safety and professionalism from a practice with an early 80’s logo, and neither would your patients.

The colour palette of a medical logo

We entrust medical practitioners the most important thing we have – our health. With such responsibility in their hands, these people ought to act as authoritative, stable and trustworthy professionals, and embed the very same characteristics into their branding. But isn’t that, more or less, what each practice is portraying?

As you see, it is more than easy to get lost in the healthcare branding ‘sameness’, and be neglected by customers even with years of expertise. What savvy customers of today want to see is a powerful message, ideally one that exposes in plain sight what makes you different than other providers.

Your logo colours can make you portray both your uniqueness and trustworthiness. To make a wise choice, look at the leading medical logos worldwide and inform yourself on colour psychology. At the same time, think of how you could balance trends with the unique and personal aspects of your business, and success will be guaranteed.

Ending thoughts on heart logo design

Hearts have been an attractive visual symbol ever since we can remember, and seem to become even more popular in today’s logo designs. They are often featured in sentimental creations, following a timeless tradition we can trace back for several centuries.

The iconic heart shape is often beautified with images and memorable slogans, and gives designers plenty of opportunities to include them in their unique creations.

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