Each company wants a logo that looks good and gives a professional first impression, but what actually makes up a great logo?
When you create your new company you will likely need to hire a graphic design company or freelancer to come up with your corporate identity. The graphic designer in charge of your project will come up with a couple of logo ideas that he thinks will work with your company. You will compare them, trying to think how it will look on letterheads, business cards and billboards. Odds are that you are not a graphic designer. You are likely the founder/owner of a business consultant company, an engineering company, marketing company, retail company, car dealer etc. All of the logos look great compared to what you would have designed yourself, but how do you choose the best one or direct the designer into the right direction?
Here are a couple of tips when deciding on a logo :
- Choose colors that work.
The chosen colours need to fit with your institution or vision. Some colours are standard for some companies e.g. blue usually works for financial companies, warm colours work for restaurants and pubs, green work for home and food, red works for marketing companies, dark colours works for nightclubs etc. A great resource for choosing a colour scheme for your logo can be found at : http://kuler.adobe.com/ - Choose fonts that are legible.
The font (text style) used must still be readable when scaled down. Companies frequently ask for cursive, natural looking fonts or creative twirly fonts. A lot of over-twirly fonts are too difficult to read since you cannot distinguish between different characters. A “T” might look like an “F” or an “N” might look live a “V“. If the words cannot be read then there is no need to have the text there in the first place. Choose clear fonts that even a toddler can make out. - Keep the logo shape compact.
Most logo’s have an illustrated part that accompanies the name of the company. If the illustrated part makes the logos’ overall shape too wide or high then scaling it down, so that the width or height fits into a specific design area, will cause the smaller parts of the logo to disappear. Keep the logo roughly square shaped or just not too wide or tall. This will allow you to scale the logo down without losing the smaller detail. - Background or not?
When you have finished your logo then you might be required to send it to suppliers or business partners for inclusion into their designs. Your logo looks great on a white background, but perhaps the project that the logo will be used in uses a green background. Your text is written in green. The other company’s designer makes your logo’s background transparent and imports it into their project. Suddenly the green text in your logo disappears on their green background. Here you will need to make a decision on contrasts. In the world of corporate identity you are allowed to have different variations of your company logo. You can choose to place your logo inside a box with a border around it, or allow glow or shadow effects on your logo to bring the design out. You may also have a logo that has a neutralizing border on all shapes and text. This border, made up of any matte colour, will act as a buffer area between the logo and the background. Supplying your logo with a transparent background will allow the other designer to use his own intuition in placing it so that the contrast remains. You will still have the final word on the acceptable usage of your logo. The best precaution is to ask for the logo on different colour backgrounds when in the design cycle.
And here follows the number 1 requirement of a great logo :
It must be memorable.
Make a logo too complicated or too bland and it will not be remembered. Top-of-mind awareness of a brand can, of course, be hammered into anyone with a big enough advertising budget, but if you are running a SME then making the logo interesting is all you have to work with. Keep the logo simple and try not to fall victim to analysis-paralysis.
Contact Us if you want some free feedback on a logo design.