If you are starting out in the yoga business either as a newly certified yoga instructor (congratulations!) or if you want to open up your very own studio (congratulations also!)…one of the first things you should get is a logo for your business.

Logos are no longer just for large corporations! A logo gives you instant credibility and identity to others like your suppliers, clients and students. It legitimizes you and your business as a reputable organization to work with.

Even if you are just looking to work as a yoga teacher in another studio, place your logo for your services on business cards, invoices, on your website and of course advertising.

So where do you start?

First off, if you are opening a studio or representing yourself, think about what you want to convey to others. What message or feeling would you like to get across when someone thinks of you or your yoga studio? Use words or imagery to describe this. Consider the type of yoga studio and the services you offer.

• Is it a hot yoga studio, power yoga? – logo should convey strength, power, stamina, focus, fire, red and orange.
• Is it a meditative focus? – peaceful, serene, soft colours, fresh, calming, blues and greens.
• Is it a health focus? – clean, strong, vibrant, healing.
• It is a community feel? – sharing, fun, connections, friendships

Consider if you want a font only logo i.e. a designed look to your yoga studio name. Or if you’d like to use some sort of imagery? Will it be animated or real life visual? What colour combinations do you like?

Sketch out some ideas or take note of other competitive studios or samples that you like.

Next is to get your logo designed. There are free logo services you can find on the internet that can either provide you with a logo from scratch or you can find a designer (locally or on sites like elance.com) that can create your logo.

Put down on paper a quick brief providing background, your yoga studio name, and words or imagery you want associated and conveyed with your logo. your personality. In our Boost Your Yoga Business! Toolkit, we provide a creative brief template that you can fill out when working with a designer for any yoga marketing materials like flyers, banners, signage.

If you do decide to purchase a logo or have it designed externally, make sure that you retrieve the files in a format that is scaleable and can be used in all forms. Vector files at high resolution or photoshop files work best. Make sure you also own all rights to the creative as well.

Once you have your logo, keep consistent and place it on every page of your website (top left corner is standard), on your letterheads, email signature etc.