It should involve communicating your message and encouraging connection with your audience. It’s more than just a pretty picture!

Logo design is a speciality. The more a designer has researched and practiced logo design, the more effective your logo will be.

The answer should be yes! Vector allows your logo to be scaled up and down without losing quality. This gives your logo flexibility for future uses.

Your logo should be suitable for your industry without looking exactly like all the rest; this requires research. Ensure that your designer understands the need for this step in the logo design process.

E.g. embroidery, car decal, smartphone app, USB sticks, website, etc.

This requires your logo to be simple enough to look good at a variety of sizes whilst also remaining unique and memorable. Creating this balance requires skill and practice.

It's best practice to have your logo delivered in both RGB and CMYK formats. Why? Because your RGB logo files are designed for viewing on screen. If you print an RGB file, the colours may not turn out how you expected them to.

CYMK files are designed for print. They might look strange on screen, but they should print accurately to match your brand.

Even if you intend to be an online-only business, you never know when you might decide to print your logo (e.g. on a letterhead, business card, sticker, etc.)

Having all the files you need at the start saves you from potentially paying additional fees to produce the requested files. I've also seen a lot of business owners get caught ought because their designer has gone out of business or can't be contacted.

Some designers use purchased stock images and licenses. That means that an element of your logo (e.g. an image such as an animal, a tree, or a particular shape) may not be unique to you. The license may be available for an unlimited number of sales, and any number of businesses could be using the same image.

While you may be fine with that (it saves you money), it's important for your designer to discuss this with you so that you're making an informed choice and you don't find out by stumbling across another business using the same image.

Finding out which logos inspire your designer will help you get a feel for what they value in logo design. For instance, if your designer likes the AirBnB logo, they might value modern minimalism. If they like the Sony logo, they might value classic simplicity.

If your designer can't tell you which logos they admire and why, you may wish to choose someone who has taken the time to study logos and gain inspiration from larger companies with huge budgets and successful marketing teams. Large companies don't take logo design lightly. They pay a lot for good design because a lot of people will see it, their reputation is linked to it, it needs to work over a huge variety of applications, and it's extremely costly if they get it wrong. There is always a huge amount of research and reasoning behind big company logo design. Even if you're not a big company, the same reasoning will apply to your business. It pays to find a designer who understands this.