Blue Iguana Mexican Restaurant Logo Design

Located in Salem, Oregon, The Blue Iguana is a mexican restaurant and cantina that aims to be different in terms of service and quality. They include a mix of traditional and modern mexican cooking in their menu and the client wanted this reflected in the logo.

The restaurant also offers live music and a bar catering to the local mexican community.

Logo Design Style and Category

Restaurant Logo Design - Illustrative

Target Market

People of all ages that love mexican food and enjoy the nightlife scene (21 and over for nightclub).

Client Requirement

This was again one of those projects where the client had no ideas except that they wanted to see an iguana in the logo

Final Logo Design Concept

We came up with numerous variations of the iguana but this one captured the client’s heart with the style, the shades and “attitude”. The hat added a little bit of a mexican flavor.

Designing restaurant logos can be tricky if you are unsure of who the customer segment is, what kind of image the restaurant is trying to project and where this restaurant is located.

We did a lot of research into these factors and understood the target market throughly before putting pencil to paper. We also thought about the usuage of the logo - a huge neon sign - and decided to come up with an icon that will look good on a neon sign.

The particular style, called illustrative logo in a broad sense, is really a line art based logo. Line art logos are good for off print usuage such as signs, embroidery etc.

Financial logos designs have become an imperative tool in today’s competitive financial market. The global surge of financial companies has commenced an era of competition unlike any seen in recent history. Financial logo designs are an effective way to differentiate from the various financial companies. The unique finance logo designs have the slogans and emblems required to develop a successful business. Each logo design will distinguish the company.

Financial logo designs must show the honesty and integrity of the company as well as the willingness to work hard. The financial logo design must be able to identify the company instantly.

Affluent companies with deep pockets were the ones associated with financial and mortgage logo designs in the past. Today, even smaller financial companies see the reason behind getting a financial logo design. Often times the financial logo design is the key to keeping the company identity out in front of the clients and the world via the internet connectedness.

Many young investors do not have any idea what the word financial means. People in the demographic group of below 25 think that financial means “where the money is going to come from for the week-end party”. However, this same demographic group is the group that is most like to bring home a large expendable income that should be saved and invested. A business must have a financial logo design out there in the business world that is clear, concise and makes a bold statement about your company.

This ‘generation next’ that is just coming into their earning power needs guidance. Unfortunately they do not look to their parents for that direction. Most of that group is going to look at the internet for the necessary information. Will your financial logo design be highly visible online?

What should the financial logo design look like? Most important of all, the logo design should be eye catching with a clear image of the company. No one knows your company like you do. That is what we are trying to change. Everyone needs to know about your company via this financial logo design.

Obviously you cannot list each and every financial service that you provide, that is what all those paper brochures are printed for. The financial logo design should be something that is precise so that it can be remembered easily. In fact, in most cases, the logo design will be remembered more often than the name will. That is okay, if your financial logo design gets referred, so does your name. Getting the name and logo design of your financial institute out to the public and the internet is the number priority.

Checkout some samples of finance, mortgage and insurance logo designs that we created.

Using a slogan is a very good way of adding to the message that a logo tries to give out. Slogans and taglines have always been around. But the current trend seems to that they are included or closely integrated into the logo design it self.
Take a look at some of the examples below:

To integrate a slogan or a tagline into a logo design, you will first have to understand the need for the slogan. Is it the kind that catches your attention? Is it a line that describes what your business does? Does it enhance your logo and make the message easier to grasp?

When clients have taglines or slogans and want them integrated into the logo design, our logo designers analyze the pros and cons of such an integration and advice the client if is appropriate to do so. Simple attaching the tag line to a logo design with out thinking through would lead to a messy looking logo.

For more designs that incorporate a slogan please look at some of our logo samples.

We see often that a very easy route for most small businesses in terms of their corporate identity is a clip art based logo design that is either designed by themselves or by a freelance friend. It is cheaper, fast and some times really impressive in the beginning.

But small businesses never stop to consider the cost of using a clip art based logo design for their company. A free or cheap clip art based logo design can hurt your company. “Oh sure. You simply want to get our business”, you say. That is true. But the important thing here is that we are talking about your business and your identity.

When meeting clients do you dress up in your pyjamas or your swimming trunks? (unless you are in the pyjama business or a beach ware shop on a beach). No. You would not. Would you talk to your clients with your mouth full of food and ketchup sauce on your shirt? No. You would not.

Then how can you show your prospective client a clip art based logo that looks cheap and unprofessional? The first thing a customer notices would be your logo, be it on the shop front, your business card or your website. When checking out competition, customers are more likely to be influenced to buy from your competitors if they have a better identity.

Imagine this. You are out in Rome and are looking for a local guide. There are two men standing in your hotel lobby waiting for customers. Your front desk operator tells you they are tour guides. The first one is of a medium build with shabby clothes, a worn out hat and even more worn out shoes. It is obvious the guy hasn’t shaved in days. The second one looks neatly groomed, is wearing a clean well pressed, has shiny shoes and is clean shaven. Now who would you chose to be your guide for the day. Most people would chose the second one. Even if he is more expensive than the first. This is applicable to all industry logos including vacation rental company logos.

The same is the case with your company logo design. If your friend, girlfriend, uncle, brother or the local butcher offers to design your logo for free or near free, it is wise to pass up that offer. Would they be in a position to understand the requirements of a professional logo design? Would they think of copyright issues? Would they think of the message the logo is broadcasting? Would they give you vector files developed with PANTONE colors that will be useful for all your printing needs? 9 times out of 10, probably not.

Most professional logo designers think of all these things and with their experience in creating corporate identities you can be assured of getting a logo that will increase the value of your company rather than diminish it.

For cost of a decent pair of shoes or a decent meal with your friends you can get a professionally designed company logo. The same rule applies to your corporate stationery, business cards, website and anything else associated with your business. Your investment in hiring a professional corporate identity designer will benefit your company many fold.

Almost every day we receive at least 3 emails advertising cheap “logo design software”. Ranging from $39 to web based flash do-it-your-self logo design software that costs as much as $200. This makes me think.

Wow, if people could just buy this software for under 40 bucks and then get their logo designed then there is no place for professionals such as me who have spent the last few years researching and creating professional logo designs for clients from around the world.

The logo design software advertised are nothing more than applications that help you put together pre-build templates or clip art images and lets you add your company name to make it into a “professional logo design“. It is simple, relatively easy and best of all, it is cheap!

The only things these advertisements and the websites selling these logo design software forget to mention are that the designs that are created from these applications are NOT unique. Any one with $40 in their pocket will have access to the same clipart images that you do. This means that a ton of people and companies can end up having the EXACT same logo design for their company corporate identity.

Secondly they also conveniently forget to mention the fact that the designs produced by these logo-design-software can not be copyrighted nor trademarked. When one applies for a logo design copyright or logo design trademark, they will be rejected by the USCO and USPTO. So when a dispute arises between two companies about the copyright of their logo design, it will boil down to who created the design first using the logo design software.

When you look at the various clipart images bundled along with the logo designer software, you will realize that they are really bad in quality and most of them have some sort of gradient or other drop shadow effect (usually created using software such as Adobe Photoshop), which means the files will be in raster format. This could lead to a nightmare when trying to get the logo printed or made into a sign. They do not scale well and will look really bad when printed or embroidered.

So why do companies such as Logo Design Works charge almost $400 to create a company logo design when a customer could buy a logo creation software for as little as $40? The reason I guess is very obvious. A professional logo design company such as Logo Design Works has logo designers with years of experience in creating corporate identities.

Creating a winning logo design is not simply about the graphics. Graphics are only 50% of the process. The other 50% involves understanding the company, the industry the company is in and underlying core branding principles and techniques.

Professional logo designers spend hours researching a company, trying to get to know it the best they can. They cross reference competitor logos to see the current trends so that they can create a logo that can be in tune with the current trends and yet stand out from the competition.

They strive to create UNIQUE designs that will stand up to copyright or trademark registration. They strive to create an identity that the customer will be proud of.
The various things that professional logo designers take into account when creating the designs are:

• Where will the logo be most used? What kind of medium?
• What kind of marketing strategy does the company have for the future?
• Who is the target audience and market?
• What kind of core identity message does the company have?
• What is the competition and what are the industry trends?

Based on the above factors and many more that have not been mentioned here, these professional corporate identity creators build from scratch logos that will stand the test of time and are very effective in terms of delivering the core message of the company.

You can expect to have any of the above happening when you create a logo from a logo software which uses pre-built clipart and template images. Think about it.