Choosing the logo design for your company is a fantastic opportunity to unleash your inner creativity but it is also the way you make your business memorable to your customers. This makes your design choices some of the most important choices you’ll ever make and could be make or break for the success of your company. Follow the handy hints below to ensure you’re up there with the best of them.
1. You pay your money…
And you definitely take your chances. We all want a bargain but when it comes to choosing a designer for your logo, cheap doesn’t always mean cheerful. Paying more for an established professional has many advantages such as creating a unique and memorable design, having no reproduction issues in the future, and giving your logo a longer lifespan. By all means shop around for the best prices, but remember, if your logo looks amateurish so will your business.
2. Trend alert!
You might be a fashion follower but you should avoid logo design trends like the plague. It makes sense if you think about it. Your business should have a unique identity to stand out from the crowd and you’ll never achieve that if you stick with the pack. So buck the trend and go it alone!
3. Raster images
We’re not talking about Bob Marley here. A raster graphic, or bitmap as it’s known in the trade, is made up of pixels, and this can cause problems with reproduction. You should be prepared to make your logo any size it needs to be and when you enlarge a raster graphic it becomes pixelated and therefore unusable. The better alternative to this is to use vector graphics instead. This maintains the visual consistency that is essential to the success of your logo, and your business. The industry standard software for logo creation is Adobe Illustrator, it cam output as vector amongst many other file types that should be supplied. See Our ‘Logo File Types Explained’ page to read more.
4. Stock art
This is one stock market you definitely want to steer clear of. The two main reasons for this are that by using stock images for your logo it is no longer unique and original so potential customers may not automatically think of you when they see the image. The other reason is that you may be breaking licensing agreement laws by reproducing stock art for your own purposes. It is a far more sensible choice to create an original design for your company than to borrow someone else’s, especially if you want to get your logo trademarked.
5. Window to your soul
Every designer wants to be proud of their work, but that doesn’t mean every piece they do has to reflect their personality. The biggest mistake you could make is to design for yourself rather than your target audience. That font may look brilliant but consider whether it really fits the company’s aims. Make sure you stay focused and create a logo you can be proud of for all the right reasons.
6. Curiouser and curiouser
Overly complicated designs never work because they confuse the customer by making it hard to focus on what the logo is really trying to say. A complex design may also lose detail when scaled down and end up looking smudged or like a mistake. The best logos are memorable, simple and easily reproduced at any size.
7. I can see a rainbow
As bright as you may want your logo to be, checking it works in one tone or at the most monochrome, should be at the top of your priorities. Colour does give a great effect but at some point your logo is bound to need to be one tone and therefore you need to make sure it doesn’t lose detail when viewed in black or grey
8. A, b, c, d…
Designing your logo is exciting and should be fun, but remember to stay focused for the big decisions. Finding the right font is one of those big decisions as the font you use says as much about your company as the graphic does. Looking at professional font foundries gives you more options than the standard type faces found in word programmes.
9. Three’s a crowd
Font choice is so important it’s featured twice on the list. Use a maximum of two fonts for your logo as this ensures two things. Firstly it improves the legibility of your logo, and secondly it increases the chances of brand recognition.
10. Don’t be a copy cat
Nobody likes a copy cat and in the world of business it does neither the designer nor the client any favours. The purpose of a logo is to represent your business and if you copy someone else’s logo then you’ve failed at the first hurdle.
So there you have it, ten top tips to help you stay afloat in the ocean of information regarding logo designs. Remember to keep it simple and original and really you can’t go wrong!
