26 Jan What Most Designers Don’t Consider With Logo Design

A logo for a business is a critical component for branding and every business, no matter how small, needs to brand themselves. You may only brand yourself locally, or you may brand your business regionally, nationally, or internationally, however, your logo is a vital part of your company image. Therefore, a lot of thought should go into this process. Logo Design is not slapping your business name under a piece of clipart. Clipart should never be used in a logo, as everything should be completely custom and unique. There are many “graphic designers” who claim to be designers with years of experience; however, many only have what I call tinkering experience. They have played around with Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator and think they are now graphic designers. That would be like a nurse who has a few years of experience saying, I think I’m going to be a doctor tomorrow. You will know amateur designers if they offer some kind of ridiculously low rate such as $100 for 5 designs or anything unreasonably cheap. With these cases, you will get regurgitated designs which either use stock clipart or rejected designs from past clients. Just know that great design and effective ad layouts take time.

When designing a logo there are many aspects such as color combination, to keep in mind to create a visually appealing logo and most experienced graphic designers can do a decent job with this. However, I want to make light of a few key areas that most inexperienced graphic designers fail to take into consideration when designing logos for companies, which can cost the client dearly in the future with increased or ineffective printing costs.

Key Logo Design Elements That Most Graphic Designers Fail To Consider

1. Height and Width of Logo – You have to think of how logos are used for business. Logos are printed on apparel, letterhead, business cards, promotional products, brochures, postcards, etc. In my days the the graphic design business, I have seen many logos that are very wide or very high. And while they may look great on the computer screen, don’t forget to think about the practicability of that height/width aspect. When doing printing on most items, there is a maximum imprint area and if your logo maxes out on width way before it maxes out on height, it will print very small. Sticking with a square, circular, or small rectangle, will help to make sure the proportions of the logo print well on most media.
2. Logo Colors – You can get really crazy with colors in a logo and use many different color that make the logo look great. However, is this the practical thing to do? When printing on paper products such as business cards, letterhead, brochures, and postcards, full color is always an option. But what about printing newspaper ads or printing on promotional items? Full color is not always an option, and if it is an option, it can be much more costly. If you choose to have a full color logo design, make sure you have a version designed that can also be used to print in a spot color form as well as a black/white version.
3. Small Details – Logos can be designed with great detail and look amazing; however, what happens to those details when your shrink the logo down in size. If you plan on printing your logo on products such as promotional pens or other promotional products, will your logo lose detail at small sizes? Really detailed logos will actually bleed together when pad printed or screen printed if they are printed too small. So really think about the long term aspect of your logo. Ideally, the simpler the logo the better. Look at some of the big brands such as Apple, McDonalds, or Nike. All of their logos are incredibly simple, yet very powerful.

During the logo design process, I urge you to think about all of the future issues you might have with actually printing your logo. Will the shape of your logo fit on most items that you will print in the future? Are you willing to pay more in printing costs should your logo be full color? Will your logo print well at small sizes? Good designers can design nice looking logos, but only great designers can create both beautiful logos AND practical designs.

If you want great Logo Design, check out some of the packages below:

$195 Basic Logo Design Package -3 Unique Designs-Up to 2 Revisions of Selected Design-Supplied in 5 Popular formats (.eps, .ai, .pdf, low res .jpg, high res .jpg)-1 artist working on your project

$295 Bronze Logo Design Package -4 Unique Designs-Up to 2 Revisions of Selected Design-Supplied in 5 Popular formats (.eps, .ai, .pdf, low res .jpg, high res .jpg)-Business Card Design with your new logo-Black/White version of logo-2 or more artists working on your project