How to design a DJ logo

Have you ever tried to design your very own logo? Probably (not), and it never seemed to go anywhere even if you tried. It may be that fancy logos are meant only for big labels and companies, not DJs. Then again, you might not have pushed at it enough and missed out on something great that would help your career significantly.

A DJ’s music and promotional materials must be branded just as goods and services of big companies are. You may not have a million dollar industry and thousands of clients behind you, but you still need to get your name across to those potential fans with as many different means as possible.

An efficient logo design isn’t just a scribble or random image to be put in the corner of a CD so that people would know it’s yours (although it might look like it sometimes). Company and product logos are characterized by central themes, customer needs and promotional impact. They are aimed at establishing a lingering presence in the market and entering the public consciousness of its clients, both current and future. In DJ terms, it translates to making a logo that reflects your music style and public image, is simple enough to be easily remembered, but also unique and unlike anything your fans have seen before. You need to be able to stand by your logo and have it stand by you and your work.

DJs with their own logos are not very common on the music scenes. In cases when they do have a logo, it usually undergoes a kind of evolution or even random bursts of fundamental changes as their career progresses. This is actually something you should avoid doing when working on your own logo, because it decreases its impact. The higher DJs get in the music scene, the bigger the chance that they have their own logo. An internationally recognized DJ or music producer will always have a logo tied to their stage name and sometimes made by a professional artist for thousands of dollars. However, it doesn’t take a logo designer to make your first logo and, who knows, it might be so good that it sticks for the rest of your DJ career.

As you can see, they all look professionally made and instantly recognizable. At the base of these logos are the stage names of different DJs and artists, written in a specific font. Choosing a font is the first step of making the logo unique. After that you play around with the letters, work on connecting, moving and splicing them in various ways until you’ve finally found the design you’d like to stick to. The process can take as little as a couple of minutes and as much as several months and years of gradual changes as you discover and rediscover your public image and style.

Just my 2 cents.

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