Your brand is what your audience feels when they see your marketing materials.

Your logo then is a visual shortcut to your brand. It’s job is to take meaning from your brand and give it a physical appearance. But if you only have one version of your logo eventually you’ll run into situations where it just doesn’t fit.

Instead of being frustrated and not knowing what to do, let’s go over the 3 logos you need to have ready to go inside of your brand kit.

Primary Logo

The first is your primary logo. This is the logo that will be used most of the time. You should always try to use this one first…it should be your go-to.

It’s not mandatory, but a logo that is more horizontal in shape works really well as your primary logo. This is because it fits easily into many situations, like on your website header, a business card, and on Facebook cover photos.

Alternate logo

Your alternate logo is basically a redesign of your primary logo.

The goal of this variation is to have a secondary option to use if your primary logo won’t work in a given space.
Let’s say you have a smaller area for your logo. That would mean that you have to shrink it down so small that you can no longer read the words. In this case your alternate logo could be used.

This is because if your primary logo is horizontal, then your alternate logo may be more vertical in shape or more square-shaped, where the words in your business name are stacked on top of one another.

Have a look at the example here, to see how the primary logo is more horizontal and the alternate logo is more square or stacked.

Submark

The 3rd logo option you need to have in your branding arsenal is called a submark.

What makes a submark so great is that it can be used to represent your brand in the smallest of locations. Think about your website favicon (the tiny graphic that lets website viewers know which tab is for which website inside of their browser) or social media profiles.

Often you’ll see just initials of a business name or only the icon pulled out of the primary logo. You want your submark to be super simple with very little detail or words, so that it is easily read at a glance.

Once you have all three of these logo options, you’ll also want to be sure you have them set up in a variety of color options.

Be sure you save files where each logo can be used in it’s full-color state, in just one color, in all black, and in all white.

Most of your time will be spent setting up your primary logo, but once that one is nailed down the other two are fairly easy to create. And you’ll be so glad that you took the time before actually needing these logos to create them.

Now, if you’re wondering, “Where do I even get started with this whole branding thing and what do I do next?” This is a question I get asked a lot and precisely why I created my free 30 Days to Launch Playbook.

It’s a checkable calendar and guide so that you know exactly what steps you need to take and in what order when starting or leveling up your business online.

Head over to free30daylaunch.com to get it