Some tips and suggestions, before hiring someone to do design or anything, you'd want to nail a few things first:
- Identity your target market
- Identity your strengths and weakness - which will bring you to the next,
- Determine your style, or niche
The above information willl be one of the few essential things the designer or brand guy will want to know to create a good branding work for you.
A great looking logo is not necessarily an effective or working logo.
A working logo is one that is very easy to remember once seen. For this reason an icon is far better than using letters. When a business does use letters in a logo they either have an advertising budget of millions of dollars or they use a single letter not multiple then have that letter designed so that it is distinct basically making it an icon anyway.
To make the point again have you ever seen someone at a party do the trick where they remember everyones name in the room? I saw a guy do it to over a hundred people once. The trick is that as he went around the room asking names he created a visual as people told him their name. This gave him the power to easily recall the names later. Use that trick to make it easier for people to remember you.
In fact any course in improving memory will teach you to do visual association because it works. So make it work for you. A unique icon that the viewer has not seen something similar.
Secondly the logo needs to create a sense of you to the first time viewer. Are you an older yet more reliable type who has mastered his craft, are you the young guy who turned up on the scene and is making waves with his cool and edgy work, are you more the comedian who combines great photography with a great time and lots of laughs.
In the long run your branding will come about by peoples experience and what they say of you to others. In the short term despite advice you may get that your logo is not your brand it will indeed do a lot of the heavy lifting.
Make it professional, make it unique and make it give the impression that is congruent with what others will be saying about their experience with you and your business in the long run.
