10 Logo Design Tips For Buyers

10 Logo Design Tips For Buyers

The logo is one of the most important elements of a brand - many argue it's the most important after the service or product. The suggestions below reflect the collaborative work of many talented designers working on crowdSPRING. 

Here we go:

1. Strong/Balanced

A logotype is an icon, whether it's made up of just text or just a graphic symbol, or both of those elements. It should reflect your company - its heart and soul - its personality. Keep your audience and products/services in mind because you want your logo to reflect your business. Favor logos that have a strong, balanced look.

2. Simple

Simplicity is vital. A complex logo will be difficult to print and reproduce and may not fully engage your audience. Take a moment and think about brands that are successful and/or famous. Most likely, you've thought of companies like Nike, Apple, Volkswagen, Target, McDonald's, etc. What do they all have in common? They all have logos that are simple and easily recognized when printed by themselves, and when printed in solid black and white.

3. Memorable

Your logo does not always need to describe what your business does. Have you ever seen a car manufacturer with a picture of a car as their logo? How about a shoe manufacturer? It would look silly to have a picture of a shoe….on a shoe.

When using icons in your logo design, consider icons that could communicate your brand without the company name. (examples: Y! for Yahoo! or the Swoosh for NIKE. This will allow you to use the icon as a stand-alone image (on product packaging, for example). For a person to retain and identify with a mark (your icon), a little mental tennis match must be played with it. If an icon is too blatantly obvious or easy to 'read,' the viewer often feels no sense of discovery or personal equity with it. But remember that too much abstraction can be dangerous because your message can be lost.

4. Flexible

A logo should be visible and distinguishable on a big billboard from 100 meters away or on a small business card from to 20 millimeters away. It should also work well in different size formats like for example on business cards, brochure, t-shirt design and other marketing materials such as embroidery, stamping, embossing, etc.

A good logo will work well in many colors and in just one or two colors (yes, black is a color). A good logo will work well on light backgrounds as well as dark backgrounds, even on multicolored backgrounds.

Many start-ups and smaller companies use their logo on a few marketing materials but use something else on other materials. Be sure that you use your logo consistently and be sure that your logo allows you the flexibility to do so in multiple formats.

5. Colors

If you are looking for a color logo, consider the messaging that color sends to your customers. Do the colors reinforce and strengthen the intended core message/personality/mood you're trying to communicate through the logo, or do they distract or neutralize? For example, blue often communicates trust, loyalty and freshness. The color blue is common in banking or finance. Green represents life, nature and cleanliness. Also consider colors that work well with dark and white backgrounds. Because logos are often printed in black and white, chose a logo design that is viable and as strong or stronger in black and white.

Although gradients provide an aesthetically-pleasing effect on computers, consider possible future uses of the logo such as on letterheads, business cards, and merchandise. Will the logo provide ease of printing and reproduction in and on all types of media? A logo for a website or a band, or a one-off project can be more rasterized and colorful than something that's going to be printed in many different ways.

Think twice about including more than 3 colors in a logo - too many colors will increase the cost of production when printing and may make the logo more difficult to reproduce. Although such costs have decreased considerably, this remains good advice.

6. Timeless

Trends are good but innovation is better. (And fads are often deadly). A logo should have a long life expectancy. It will evolve and change over time, but the longer it stays the same at its heart, the better brand recognition you will get over time. Examples: Coca-Cola, Dior, Rolex. A good logo will have a sense of timelessness about it. A logo that feels anchored in a certain time period is more likely to feel outdated or need substantial repurposing fairly quickly. The best logos change very little yet feel fresh and vibrant every time. (Nike, IBM, Apple).

7. Unique

Will it stand out among the clutter and the crowd? Does the mark distinguish itself in a unique way from the competition, or is it predictable / default / bland — and thus unmemorable and ultimately invisible to the intended audience? With thousands upon thousands of fonts, billions of color combinations, and an infinite flow of design ideas, choose the logo that is most unique. Try to avoid common logo cliches like "swoops," "wooshes," and "pinwheels;" these techniques are perhaps the most commonly used practices in the logo industry (just look around your house, you'll see). Avoid clip art like the plague, unless it's significantly modified by the artist. It's quite disturbing when you start noticing your logo, and things that look like it on many other people's brands. That's the quickest way to look low-budget and second-rate.

8. Typography

Typography, Typography, Typography. Ask yourself what you're trying to communicate. Depending on the type of application; typefaces with serifs convey a sense of dignity & power, sans serifs are often more clean looking and offer either a sense of stability or whimsy (depending on the character of the face). Will the face work with what you currently have? Can it be read at small sizes? Is the letterspacing/word spacing well adjusted? (the larger the wording gets, the more obvious the flaws will be) Typography is a craft in itself- it's the first voice of stating who you are. Beware that there are some truly horrible typefaces out there, make sure you're getting your money's worth.

8. Branding

Don't compare the logo you will be choosing to already famous brands in the world. Those brands are famous not because of their logo, but because of the people/vision behind that logo. So, always remember that the branding behind the logo is very very important.

8. Vector is Best

Always request vector based graphics. It's often tempting to ask for complex illustrations in a logo. However, unless you plan on never using your logo outside of an on-screen/online application, a JPG or PSD isn't going to cut it. A properly drawn vector design will provide you with the ultimate flexibility.

Much thanks to the following talented creatives working on crowdSPRING for their collaborative effort to bring this guide to you: Jabraulter, MadRooster, Engage, KS_Knight, Typecast, OpenHead, marckohlbrugge, entz,romasuave, jellopudding, nisha0612, ciotog, graphxpro, fackhir, fredK, haetro, hollter, DWNees, Rambler001,squarelogo, MGDboston

I Love Logo Design

How a Web Design Goes Straight to Hell

A must read!

How a Web Design Goes Straight to Hell

Minding your own Business

I love this one & just had to share it.

"How I learned to mind my own business: I was walking past the mental hospital the other day, And all the patients were shouting, '13....13....13.' The fence was too high to see over, but I saw a Little gap in the planks, so I looked through to see What was going on..... Some idiot poked me in the eye with a stick! Then they all started shouting '14....14....14.

8 Ways to Drive a Graphic Designer Mad

As everyone knows, graphic designers are the reason there are so many wars in this world. They get inside our heads with their subliminal advertising, force us against our will to spend money on the worst pieces of shit, and eventually, drive us to depression and random acts of violence. And of course, most of them arecommunists.

So to do my part to save the world from them, i made a list of things you can do when working with a graphic designer, to assure that they have a burn-out and leave this business FOREVER.

1-Microsoft Office
When you have to send a graphic designer a document, make sure it’s made with a program from Microsoft Office. PC version if possible. If you have to send pictures, you’ll have more success in driving them mad if, instead of just sending a jpeg or a raw camera file, you embed the pictures inside a Microsoft Office document like Word or Powerpoint. Don’t forget to lower the resolution to 72 dpi so that they’ll have to contact you again for a higher quality version. When you send them the ‘higher’ version, make sure the size is at least 50% smaller. And if you’re using email to send the pictures, forget the attatchment once in a while.



2-Fonts
If the graphic designer chooses Helvetica for a font, ask for Arial. If he chooses Arial, ask for Comic Sans. If he chooses Comic Sans, he’s already half-insane, so your job’s half done.

3-More is better
Let’s say you want a newsletter designed. Graphic designers will always try to leave white space everywhere. Large margins, the leading and kerning of text, etc. They will tell you that they do this because it’s easier to read, and leads to a more clean, professional look. But do not believe those lies. The reason they do this is to make the document bigger, with more pages, so that it costs you more at the print shop. Why do they do it? Because graphic designers hate you. They also eat babies. Uncooked, raw baby meat.
So make sure you ask them to put smaller margins and really, really small text. Many different fonts are also suggested (bonus if you ask for Comic Sans, Arial or Sand). Ask for clipart. Ask for many pictures (if you don’t know how to send them, refer to #1). They will try to argument, and defend their choices but don’t worry, in the end the client is always right and they will bow to your many requests.

4-Logos
If you have to send a graphic designer a logo for a particular project, let’s say of a sponsor or partner, be sure to have it really really small and in a low-res gif or jpeg format. Again, bonus points if you insert it in a Word document before sending it. Now you might think that would be enough but if you really want to be successful in lowering the mental stability of a graphic designer, do your best to send a version of the logo over a hard to cut-out background. Black or white backgrounds should be avoided, as they are easy to cut-out with the darken or lighten layer style in photoshop. Once the graphic designer is done working on that bitmap logo, tell him you need it to be bigger.
If you need a custom made logo, make your own sketches on a napkin. Or better yet, make your 9 year old kid draw it. Your sketch shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes to make. You don’t want to make something that’s detailed and easy to understand, because the less the designer understands what you want, the more you can make him change things afterwards. Never accept the first logo. Never accept the 9th, make him do many changes, colors, fonts & clip art. Ask him to add a picture in the logo. Bevels. Gradients. Comic Sans. And when he’s at his 10th attempt, tell him that you like the 2nd one the most. I know, it’s mean but remember: graphic designers are the cause of breast cancer among middle aged women.
5-Chosing your words
When describing what you want in a design, make sure to use terms that don’t really mean anything. Terms like ‘jazz it up a bit’ or ‘can you make it more webbish?’. ‘I would like the design to be beautiful’ or ‘I prefer nice graphics, graphics that, you know, when you look at them you go: Those are nice graphics.’ are other options. Don’t feel bad about it, you’ve got the right. In fact, it’s your duty because we all know that on fullmoons, graphic designers shapeshift into werewolves.
6-Colors
The best way for you to pick colors (because you don’t want to let the graphic designer choose) is to write random colors on pieces of paper, put them in a hat and choose. The graphic designer will suggest to stay with 2-3 main colors at the most, but no. Choose as many as you like, and make sure to do the hat thing in front of him. While doing it, sing a very annoying song.
7-Deadlines
When it’s your turn to approve the design, take your time. There is no rush. Take two days. Take six. Just as long as when the deadline of the project approaches, you get back to the designer with more corrections and changes that he has time to make. After all, graphic designers are responsible for the 911 attacks.
8-Finish him
After you’ve applied this list on your victim, it is part of human nature (although some would argue weather they’re human or not) to get a bit insecure. As he realises that he just can’t satisfy your needs, the graphic designer will most likely abandon all hopes of winning an argument and will just do whatever you tell him to do, without question. You want that in purple? Purple it is. Six different fonts? Sure!
You would think that at this point you have won, but don’t forget the goal of this: he has to quit this business. So be ready for the final blow: When making final decisions on colors, shapes, fonts, etc, tell him that you are disappointed by his lack of initiative. Tell him that after all, he is the designer and that he should be the one to put his expertise and talent at work, not you. That you were expecting more output and advices about design from him.

Tell him you’ve had enough with his lack of creativity and that you would rather do your own layouts on Publisher instead of paying for his services. And there you go. You should have graphic designer all tucked into a straight jacket in no time!

INTRODUCTION

Hello, my name is Andrea Foglia of andreafoglia.com web and graphic design. I was born and raised in Rochester, New York. Having graduated from Niagara University with my Bachelors degree in Communications and minor concentrations in fine art and business, I continuted on Rochester Institute of Technology where I earned my Masters degree in Computer Graphics Design.

In early 2006 I relocated to Las Vegas were I have been designing for 3.5 years. Currently, I am working as a web/graphic designer at eBizAutos. I've worked in the design industry for 9 years. I specialize in print, editorial and typographic design.

I am also capable in web and multimedia design. I excel in building brand identity and pride myself in clean, controlled, fluent and organized design elements.