“He was ashamed.
Thought of changing my name.
Oh, what’s in a name?”

Sang Timon and Pumbaa in the Lion King. And just like on the African savanna, there is a lot to a name and picking the right one with a solid logo is crucial to your business’ success.

I see numbered companies all the time (e.g. 12346666 Canada Inc.). What a shame that the business owner didn’t take the time to actually register a real business name that is recognizable and can be easily remembered. Don’t make that same mistake. Name your business and integrate it into your logo.

Allan Dib in The 1-Page Marketing Plan stresses the importance of picking a business name that doesn’t require its own explanation. He argues that it’s hard enough to do marketing without adding the additional step of trying to associate your product and services with your business name.

That being said, before diving too deep into any name, make sure that its domain name (website address) is actually available. I use Namecheap to do that verification and to actually register my domains. When searching to see if a domain name is available, focus on “.com” and “.ca” (or your country’s equivalent) domain extensions. Those extensions add credibility whereas many others actually detract from your business and disincentive people from clicking on your links.

If your desired domain name is not available, consider adding a descriptive to it. For example, if “Apple.com” is not available, consider “Applecomputers.com”. Or if you don’t want to limit your business to a particular space of the market, you can use a more generic descriptive, such as “appleinc.com” All of those options are generally better perceived than to tweak the spelling of your business’s name to something that is similar but spelled incorrectly, maybe with the exception for tech companies.

If your domain is a little tricky to spell, consider also registering its classic misspellings and have those domains all link to your correctly spelled domain.

After finding a domain which is available, check your provincial business registry and the Canadian Intellectual Property Office trademark database to make sure that your proposed name is not being used by another business. In theory, you can use the same name as another business if your business is operating in another area of the market, but be mindful of such approach as this can cause you problems down the road if ever your business wants to expand.

For your actual registered business name, try to keep your descriptives (e.g. Red Canoe Restaurant, Red Canoe Investments, Red Canoe Café) to a bare minimum or none at all if you can get away with it. The goal is to make it as easy as possible for people to write cheques to your business and for you to sign your official correspondence. Even if your business’s domain has a descriptive, your business’s registered name doesn’t need to have one.

In addition, if you have to register your business in another language (for example, French), you generally only have to change the descriptive, the distinctive (Red Canoe in the above example) does not need to be changed.

Next step is then to come up with a logo. In that regard, try to keep it clean and simple. Unless if you have a very good reason to do so, your logo should include your business’ name.

Keep to a bare minimum the number of colours in your logo. More than two is generally a bad idea. Consider a main colour and black (or a dark grey) as a starting point.

Same for fonts, you need to limit these. Unless you plan on having a serif font (with the bars under the letters) for the distinctive with a sans-serif font (without the bars) for the descriptive, limit yourself to a single font for your logo. Small capitals can also be a nice touch.

I personally design my logos in CorelDraw, but the Affinity suite of programs, Adobe PhotoShop or Microsoft Publisher are all good alternatives. Make sure that whatever program you are using supports true small capitals if you are planning to use them in your logo as the simulated ones generated by say, Microsoft Word, don’t look as nice.

As a final test of your logo, try to draw it out by hand. If you can pull this off, you are likely on to something otherwise, it is too complicated. Happy naming and designing!