Early on when you start a roofing company you probably will want to get cards, or get some inexpensive marketing or advertising started to bring in customers. One of the things besides the font or typeface you choose that you need to think about is the logo. A logo is an icon that brands, or stands for, your company and becomes synonymous with your business just as much as the name you choose. It becomes part of your brand identification, or the subconscious way people recognize that is your company and your work. Careful thought should always go into a logo, including the colors, legibility, and making sure that logo does not get you into legal hot water.
People have a tendency to go a little crazy with logos, getting creative, esoteric, or downright obtuse. What that means is they end up with something pretty but not able to be linked to their company or industry, what they do, or it is so vague that no one has any idea what it is, let alone what it stands for. Mystical, buried meanings of logos might have deep rooted meaning to you, but more than likely will not mean jack to the person trying to figure it out. The person looking at it is your potential customer, and they need to know what you do for a living, not what ancient marble shooting harmonica playing right of passage you belonged to when you were ten.
A logo needs to be clean enough to reproduce easily and clearly on things as little as the face of a business card, and big enough without looking ugly on the side of your van or work truck. They need to be colors that are easy to see, read, spot and decipher. Gradient fading grey dots might be wicked cool to you, but Mrs. Smith can- not see them at all, let alone make out the pale grey phone number below it on your truck signs. You also need to make sure the design does not come out looking like something you might regret, such as a symbol that can be misinterpreted or misconstrued, or that is too close to another company that has a registered or trademarked logo, meaning you might end up in legal trouble. A little research goes a long way, and remember that just because you think death metal is cool, not nearly all your customers will think gore dripping instruments are appropriate for the guy you want to hire to fix your roof.
Logos can be really hard to design so they are effective, but there are good, cheap custom artwork companies available online. It is important to not plagiarize artwork, graphics, or drawings. Honesty is honesty, and that includes the use of things for a logo that you should be paying the licensing fee, which is usually really inexpensive to get created. Better yet, get ahold of a marketing company or online logo or graphic developer and have them do it. It is very inexpensive, they will get basic info and come up with designs based on your ideas and color choices, and they almost always allow some revisions when needed.
When you are trying to decide on a logo for a roofing company, the more it shows the trade, the better you most likely are in the final product. A simple roofline can be a solid, striking logo, but so can a sepia line drawing of guys on a roof. Some will depend on your market and what the general timbre is in the region for the kind of advertising that grabs people’s attention. If you are in a more traditional location, often more detail can be used in the logo design. If you are in a more contemporary or modern part of the country, bolder use of line and color with fewer details often works best. Color is a personal choice, but remember that it has to be legible and comfortable for the eye to see and retain. Psychedelics, choppy wavy lines, broken up appearances, and other hard to focus or implied rubble or chaos in a design are not conducive to the professional image you want to portray for a roof job. Roofs protect families and possessions, and are large investments. Roofing logos need to be taken seriously, not off the cuff.
Unless you have good graphic design skills and the patience to let others critique your design ideas to assess which ones are the most appealing for use as the silent salesman of your company, it is a good idea to employ the skills of a good marketing company that can do this work for you as part of your basic advertising package. You might want to get swag for thank you gifts to your customers one day, and you want to have a logo and reputation that makes them keep the item and not donate it to the white elephant sale. You get what you pay for, and paying for a good logo is usually inexpensive. It is also alterable after done as your company grows. Spend the time and money up front for a quality logo, and you will get more than your money back in the image it creates for your roofing venture.
