Digital Design Advice

Hey Everyone,

Welcome back to DDA, we have an excellent post today with a few friendly tips about logo design. Logo design is, without a doubt, one fo the most important areas of design from a business point of view and if you’re good at it it can be both profitable and fun.

There are certain rules however to developing a good logo, especially if you want to provide value for a business.
Including Text

Most compnaies want their name inside a logo but ideally you want to keep the imagary seperate from the text. This is because text goes against a bunch of the other points in this list and it also fails to be multilingual and can overcomplicate things.

There is nothing wrong with producing a variation of the logo with text alongside but be sure not to intertwine the two components so much that they cannot be separated.

Of course there are always exceptions, the Coca Cola logo is just text at the end of the day. Use your judgement as a designer and keep the following tips in mind.

Scalable

A big thing that designers forget is that logo’s must be scalable both ways. That means it should look good at 1 inch square or five meters. Make sure your logo does not loose value when shrunk or enlarged and remember that logos will be in a variety of placed so it should look consistant.

Aspect ratio also plays a big part here, do not make a logo that’s really tall or really long as it it won’t scale well on documents and won’t work well on external websites or products. Try to aim for square or just off square with the icon and let text make it wider if you need to.

Colour

Choosing the right colour is important for a logo, it almost sets a theme for the whole company and can often be carried into office design and packaging. Make sure you consider this when making a logo, if you intergrate too many colours you will make it difficult to place with anything else.

Additionally make sure your logo looks good greyscale. There are several reasons for this, the primary being the paper communication may well be in black and white and you don’t want your logo loosing value just because its printed out.

Representation

A massive misconception of many designers is that logos have to represent what a company does, i.e a gardening logo with a flower in it or a plumbers logo with a burst pipe. Sure these look great but good logos don’t need it, look at all these logos and tell me if they actually say what a company does?

None of them do, they are memorable and eye catching but they represent the brand not the product.

Coming back to what we mentioned in the colour section it’s important to remember logos set the tone for the theme of a company, try to represent this, not your product or service.

You also need to be aware what you might be mis-representing. Read this blog post and make sure you don’t make the same mistakes and make sure you’re not accidental breaching copyright or similar rules, definitely don’t steal or “borrow” anything, eventually you will be caught oput, especially if your successful.

Be Sure

Got your logo design done? Make sure they like it then make sure they have the full works, print design, letterheads, car stickers everything. Not just because you can make money but it will make their brand more valuable.

Getting your logo out there is the point of having a logo, if they don’t utilise it then there was no point in doing the logo in the first place. If they don’t agree show them your trainers or iPod, everything is branded, Nike shows often feature the logo 3-4 times per shoe.

The logo also needs to be static, not redesigned after a few months. Show them how valuable it is to keep a logo theme and give exmaples of the big companies that have.

Target Audience

The client liking their logo is important but press to them it’s their potentialy customers who should like it best. When you do a design always keep customers, not the client, at the forefront of design reasoning. If they really disagree? Well that’s too bad but at least try to get them to understand.

OK That’s all I have for you, hope these tips help with your logo design, let us know if you have anymore