7 Simple Design Tips to Improve Your Company Brand

Yiying Lu
Yiying Lu
Aug 24, 2017 · 6 min read

Below is a collection of my tips and feedback from a creative logo live-hacking workshop I led during the most recent 500 Startups seed accelerator program, Batch 22. The goal was to help startups better communicate their branding messages through simple yet effective design practices.

Here are 7 Design Hacks we implemented to give Batch 22 companies a logo facelift:

1. Use a simple, yet meaningful color & icon combination

VCV — AI-powered recruiting bot that helps enterprises hire smarter and faster.

The initial VCV logo was one color, making it unclear that the first “V” stands for video and the “CV” stands for resume. Their logo could easily be confused with “venture capital,” since the first 2 letters are “VC”. I suggested to highlight the V in black and the C & V in green to separate and clarify.

Also, originally this company began as a video interview platform for enterprise recruitment, but has now pivoted to a bot with AI powered voice recognition and video recording capabilities. Because of this, it’s no longer relevant to use the initial old-fashion film icon as a representation of the new services. I suggested replacing this the film icon with a play button to indicate “playing content” and embed the play button into the letter “C”.

This also opens up opportunities to introduce their other new functions, such as a pair of VR goggles icon for virtual reality, the speaker icon for the audio bot, and the magnifying glass for the search bot. This creates more consistent branding to enhance the brand recognition.

2. Use a suitable typeface to reflect brand personality

Elyse28 — a virtual clinic that enables women to book video appointments with health practitioners and do comprehensive at home screening test.

Based on the startup’s target audience (female users) and target market (health coaching for women), we needed to create an elegant, friendly, and simple brand identity. We also needed make sure the weight of the logo type works when in a smaller size.

The initial design is simple and elegant, yet the weight of the typeface is too light, making it hard to read when it’s a smaller size, especially since the 28 part is not very legible (28 represents the average human menstrual cycle, which is 28 days).

The solution was to, 1. Change the typeface to a serif font & italicize it to evoke the elegance, 2. Drop the uppercase name to a lowercase name to make it more friendly, 3. Make the 28 bigger so that the logo also works in a smaller size.

3. Avoid design element breaking the legibility of the letter forms

OpenUp — Measures the impact on purchase behavior across online and offline ads.

The original O with the arrow within the character made the O less legible (could look like the letter “e”), instead the arrow could be more legibly integrated into the “up”. I also recommend using the 2 blue colors to distinguish the “Open” and “Up”, making it easy to remember the brand name.

4. Use separate colors highlighting the words in the brand name

LaborVoices — Protects apparel brands through intel on factory conditions sourced directly from workers.

Adding the color purple to highlight the word “voices” distinguished it from the world “labor”, making it a lot easier to remember.

Also, because I changed the word voices to purple, I also used the circles between the 2 “o”s make the logo look more visually consistent and bring the two colors together.

5. Integrate the Initials of your brand name into the Logo Icon

Mobile Forms — A platform for local and international businesses to crowdsource reliable market data in Africa.

The Mobileform logo was originally a stand alone mobile phone icon with multiple pages to indicate forms, yet it was not distinctive enough to represent the brand. I suggested integrating the initial letter M from “Mobileform” into the book icon. Also highlighting the words “mobile” & “forms” in 2 different blue colors made it easier to read.

6. Use uppercase & lowercase combination

Cryptomover — Developing index funds to allow investors to diversify their crypto portfolios with minimal time and effort.

The original logo for Cryptomover was in all caps, which is not suggested for a long logo name (more than 6 characters). I suggested to combine uppercase & lowercase letters of the name for better brand name awareness. Also highlighting the words “crypto” & “mover” in different colors made it easier to read.

Additionally, the company name is “Cryptomover”, yet the part “C” was in an icon, making it visually disconnected with the rest of the brand name. I suggested they keep the “C” part as a symbol, and write out the entire company name in text.

7. Keep it simple

Fyodor Biotechnologies — Developing a non-invasive technology that helps people with a fever diagnose malaria in 25 minutes using a few drops of urine instead of blood.

Depending on the nature of the business you are running, some times less is more. Fyodor Biotechnologies’ main website is FyodorBio.com, so I suggested the brand name reflect the website name. Also since they are in the health tech business, I suggested to simplify the logo using a clean and straightforward san serif font with Regular weight typeface for “Fyodor” in black and a heavier weight font for “Bio” in green. This will help to establish a tone of voice that is clear and trustworthy.

To summarize, here are the additional 7 design tips to rebrand / improve your startup logo designs:

  1. Use a simple, yet meaningful color & icon combination
  2. Use a suitable typeface to reflect brand personality
  3. Avoid design element breaking the legibility of the letter forms
  4. Use separate colors highlighting the words in the brand name
  5. Integrate the Initials of your brand name into the Logo Icon
  6. Use uppercase & lowercase combination
  7. Keep it simple

Hope this helps.


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Yiying Lu

Written by

Yiying Lu

Artist of @Twitter 🐳 Creator of 🥟🥡🥠🥢🦚 emojis • Bilingual Speaker • @FastCompany Creative Person 2018 • Dumpling Connoisseur • past: @500Startups

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