Fresh, organic, home-grown fruits and vegetables are more popular than ever before. Thousands and thousands of consumers look to support more sustainable, earth-friendly agricultural efforts, from city to country.
Relatively few have the space and time it requires to plant gardens for themselves. So who do they turn to?
Well, hopefully, they turn to you!
If you operate an organic farm, on any scale, you have a valuable service to offer to those around you. Whether you sell organic vegetables to a wide market or simply on the road side, your products will be in demand — provided that people know you’re there.
To successfully alert potential customers to your farm, good marketing is important. And a basic aspect of good marketing is a great logo.
Here’s a quick how-to so you can design your own amazing farm logo to market your organic vegetables.
Step One: Know Who You Are
Your organic farm is probably built on your family, the people who are working it, and cultivating the ground. Most smaller farms start out that way, even if they become much larger over time.
It’s important to build your logo design on the same principles that helped you to build your farm, to begin with. Before you start to design the logo, ask yourself the following questions:
- What are my values?
- What are the goals for the farm?
- What personality traits do I want to present to the world as representing the farm?
This is important because our values should shape what we show to the world. On top of that, logos come in a wide range of different types, just like people. A great way to end up with a fantastic logo is to identify the sort of person you are yourself.
Are you fun-loving? Your logo can be humorous, too.
Are you family-oriented? Your logo can reflect that!
Consumers often shop and support locally grown, organic farms in part because they are drawn by the personality and values of the owners of the farm. So analyze your own values and personality, and be ready to create a design that reflects those aspects!
Step Two: Look For Inspiration, But Be Unique
Your second step in creating an incredible farm logo is to look around at other logos for inspiration. You likely have other farms around you that you can look to. You could also check out design sites such as Behance, or look for inspiration on Pinterest.
Designs tend to fall into trends, depending on niche and season. So you may very well come across some trends within the farm logo niche, including certain colors and styles.
Trends aren’t always bad, but remember that your logo should be tailored to you, and should help you stand out from other farms. So be careful not to imitate any other designs too closely. You don’t want a look-alike logo; you want to create something truly unique.
Step Three: Pen And Paper
Now it’s time to start brainstorming your potential designs for your logo. With pen or pencil and a sheet of paper, sketch as many possible ideas as you can fit. If you fill up the paper and you still have more ideas, try another one.
Think about the logos that you’ve seen, and your own analysis of your farm’s personality and values. Certain images are commonly found in logos for organic farms, such as windmills, fields, leaves and plants, and, of course, farmhouses and barns.
All of these icons can be rendered in different styles, so let your imagination go wild!
Step Four: Choose A Style
Once you’ve got a good amount of possibilities on the page, go through and narrow down your selections. One of the important things at this stage is choosing the style that you want for your logo.
You could choose anything from photo-realistic, to silhouette, to detailed, to simple, to cartoon — the possibilities are endless.
You may also decide that you want to just use a type-based logo, otherwise known as a wordmark or lettermark. This is a great option, too. Take some time to look for font inspiration on free font websites such as Google Fonts.
Choosing your graphic style is about marrying the graphic itself to the message that is sent by the style. For instance, a “cartoon” drawing of a barn will give your logo a lighthearted, family-oriented vibe.
You may decide that you want to stick with a hand-drawn rendition of your logo, if you — or your kids — have come up with something particularly perfect. That’s fine, too. Once you make your decision, it’s time to move on to the next step.
Step Five: Create A Vector Image
Creating a vector image for your logo is important because vectorizing the logo makes it flexible and scalable. If you just have a raster image — like most photographs, for example — it will pixelate when it is blown up to a larger size, and the details and integrity will be lost.
A vector image maintains image integrity at any size.
You can use a variety of free or paid software programs to create your logo. There are walkthroughs and more in-depth guide on creating your agricultural or farm logo available with just a simple search.
If you want to turn your hand-drawn image into a vector logo, you can follow a tutorial such as this one.
Step Six: Choose Your Colors
You probably noticed, as you were looking for inspiration, that certain colors tend to pop up over and over in farming logos. Brown and green are very popular options — and that only makes sense, as they are closely tied to the agriculture industry itself. Green particularly gives a tone of growth and life, which is probably something you want for your natural farm.
Depending on the type of farm and what products you sell, you may want to choose something a little more unique and tailored to your farm. For example, an eggplant purple makes a great accent color — and even more so if you actually sell organic eggplants!
Just remember not to choose colors that are too similar to any other existing logo.
Step Seven: Share Your Logo!
The last, and arguably most important, step in creating your awesome logo is to get it out there for all to see!
Whether you sell on the side of the road, at a farmer’s market, or somewhere even bigger, consider printing up a sign with your logo to display along with your vegetables. You could also print up business cards.
If you sell through a website and ship your products out of the area, make sure to include your new logo on your site.
If you’ve created a farm logo that is really centered on your values and personality, you’ll feel proud to share that logo with your existing customers, and it will help to gain new ones, as well.
