Dog walking, grooming salons, pet shops— there are hundreds of different types of businesses associated with our favourite furry friends, and countless companies striving to provide the best services for them.
On top of that, many other business owners find inspiration from their pets, or want to include their best friend in their brand's personality.
With all of these factors combined, it’s no wonder that we see hundreds of pet and animal logos around us. They're among the most popular logo design styles, and can be endlessly adapted. In fact, there are as many different design ideas as there are animals themselves!
But you can't just choose a pet logo for the sake of looking at a cute animal every time you see your branded materials. It needs to have a relevant connection to your business.
If you're starting a new business or planning on a rebrand and want to involve your furry friend, there are plenty of ways that you can design a pet logo and still keep it relevant. Find out how below...
Choose a Mascot
Mascots are the best type of logo for creating an emotional connection between a company and its audience. As a species, we relate to things with faces, whether they’re cartoon characters, cute puppy dogs, or animated trees. So a mascot logo is an excellent way to establish a relationship between you and your target demographic.
Mascot logos are commonly used for sports teams and family businesses. Of course, they aren’t all animals or pets — for example, KFC's mascot is Colonel Sanders — but there do seem to be more animal mascots than human ones.
Pets make excellent mascots as they bring cuteness, personality, and often a backstory to a logo. For example, the American company Target has an English Bull Terrier named Bullseye. Though the dog itself isn’t the traditional logo for the retail giant, he is the official mascot, and a familiar face to Target customers. He’s even “branded” with the Target logo, linking back to the official logo and further cementing the connection with the company. And as Target also sells pet supplies (along with everything else) it works well on multiple levels.
When choosing a logo for your business, you could follow Target’s example by “branding” your mascot. If you don’t have a pet of your own that you want to incorporate as a company mascot, you can still use a pet in your logo and make it relevant to your business by giving it its own mascot name and backstory, just like Bullseye.
If you do have pets, use them for inspiration like pet supply store Essex Bird And Pet Supply. Their logo, pictured below, features their own pets and Ricoh, the dog reflected in the logo, is even known as the “store mascot”.
Accessorize the Design
Accessorizing the design of your pet logo can further strengthen the link back with your brand. This can be done using shapes, graphics, styles, objects, and even clothing. The logo for pet accessories line Huxley and Kent, for example, is a line drawing, which resembles a dog wearing a cute bow tie. This works really well as their spotlight product is in fact bow ties for dogs!
Designing a pet logo that looks like it could belong to just about any pet-related company won’t do your business any favours though. Choose design elements that enhance and harmonize with your branding, and make your pet logo unique.
Colour Scheme
Another important part of your branding is the colour scheme you use. This is a vital way in which you can turn your pet logo into something truly relevant to your brand, by using a coherent, consistent colour scheme across all branded materials, including your logo.
Logos don’t need to be true to life. In fact, it could be argued that they’re better off being stylized and simplified. This is especially applicable if your logo has multiple types of pets involved - each pet could be a different colour, showcasing the diversity of pets in the same way that using pink and blue in a shop logo would point to it catering to both boys and girls.
Generally speaking, it’s better to restrict colours in logo design. The experts suggest only one to three colours and this appears to be fairly common practice as in a study of the biggest brands, almost 100% of them do not use more than two colours in their logo design.
Of course, there are exceptions to the rule. For example, if your pet logo is a brilliantly-coloured parrot you may choose more than three colours in order to really make your logo stand out.
Tell a Story
One final tip is to build on the idea of creating a mascot to help make your logo the star of the show. Not only can you give your mascot a backstory, but you can also include it in other branding, including advertisements and promotional videos.
Giving your pet mascot a story will further connect your audience to your logo, and by extension your company. The stronger that connection, the better! And as you enhance the relevance of your logo, you may just find that choosing a great pet logo was one of the best branding decisions you’ve ever made.
Guest Blogger - Hannah Williams
Diligent and meticulous with an avid understanding of business dynamics, Hannah Williams works with clients who want the best for their business. She’s a content strategist, a brand designer, and a corporate communication consultant. Connect with her here.