When looking for dental logos you need to consider the following elements. If done correctly, your dental logo can set you apart from other practices and attract ideal patients. Whether 
you are creating your first logo or upgrading the logo of your existing practice these suggestions will work for you.
(1) Strategy: A good dental logo design starts with a good marketing strategy. You need to have identified an ideal patient and practice differentiator to develop a strong tagline for your logo. Survey your existing clients and ask them why they value you. Look for trends and use these to develop a tagline that resonates with your ideal patients.
2) (2) Name: Sometimes a strategy can define a practice name, e.g. All Care Dental, Emergency Dental, or Overland Park Dentistry. Name changes have pluses and minuses. It can be a good thing if you have a strong differentiator, as above, or you have plans to sell the practice. Your surname as your company name can hinder the sale of the practice. If you nail your strategy with a good name you may not even need to add a tagline to your new practice name.
3) (3) Design and Color scheme: A good design can take many forms and styles. It can use a piece of art or an art element or stylized type. It is best to use art that is symbolic to your specialty or name. For example you could use a stylized tooth, a red cross for emergency, a clock for no-wait dentistry or combination of letters from your practice name. A combination of colors is a great way to differentiate your look and help you stand out. Blue is most people’s favorite color and is calming. But there are many great color combinations as well.
4) (4) Legibility: One of my pet peeves is dental logos that are illegible. You either can’t read the name or recognize the art. The 3-second rule applies here; you should be able to tell in 3 seconds the name of the practice, how you are different or identify your specialty. Another deterrent is placing type on top of art. Rarely does the design outweigh the name of the practice and this sort of shadow design should be avoided.
5) (5) Who to design? Now that you have a great name in mind, a descriptive tagline and some basic colors, you can contact a graphic artist or a logo design specialist to put it together. We all like to create and it can be a fun process, but leave this to a professional – it is money well spent.
I prefer to use local artist that once proven, can be useful in the design of many more items you need such as, dental marketing materials, postcards, ads, presentation folders, forms, and dental business cards.
Be careful of using a virtual company, they may use crowd sourcing to design 10 – 20 dental logo's – and you pay for the one you like best. Typically services cost $300 to $750. Although a great idea, one company took my $500 dollars and never provided a design and never returned the money. Another company took 3 months to get the final design, the communication was very poor, the process hard to understand, ultimately taken way more of my time than necessary.
Quality dental logos are not as easy as they seem to design, but a good dental logo for your practice can help you stand out, especially if it includes a strong differentiator. To better work with a graphic designer and ensure a quality logo, you should use a creative brief, download ours today.
