Some almost ‘carved-in-stone’ of logo design
While the variables are infinite (that’s a good thing – it means that every
logo can be original and unique) there are certain benchmarks (I hesitate to call them rules or
design commandments) that if you follow, will pretty well insure that you’ll end up with a decent and workable logo. While whether or not any logo is ‘good’ remains completely subjective, following these pointers will give you a logo that’s usable, practical and promising a long shelf life.
1) Uniqueness
Your logo should be able to stand out as completely ‘yours’. It’s surprising how many times we get asked to copy logos – we’ve even had clients request a ‘version’ of
The Logo Factory house. Not a good idea. On top of the potential legal complications nothing screams ‘unprofessional’ like a logo that’s looks even remotely like someone else’s. Do not engage in
copying logos. I’ll say it again. Do. Not. Copy.
2) Timeless
Every few years there’s a trend, or fad, that new logos seems to embrace. A few years ago it was the ‘swoosh’ – made logos all hi-tech and ‘internety’. Trouble is, everybody jumped on that bandwagon and the treatment rapidly became hackneyed and trite. Few years hence, and we’ve got lots of people stuck with out of date designs. The latest design logo trend is so-called 2.0, a technique that (like a lot of design trends) can be traced back to
Apple Computers. Take your logo, add a ‘gel’ treatment, give it glassy reflection at the bottom and you’re all set. (hey – the
3D version of our house could qualify!). Web 2.0 is still going strong, but I’ll go out on a limb and say it will be yesterday’s news by end of summer. These are definitely
logos to avoid.
3) Gimmick Free
Special FX and filters are usually applied, by inexperienced designers, to
business logos that are ‘missing something’. Trouble is, what the design is generally missing is any design integrity, and adding bevels, lens flares and drop shadows is the logo design version of ‘putting lipstick on a pig’. While it certainly shows how cool your latest design software is, it doesn’t do much for the professionalism of your mark. Such treatments are fine for glamor shots (used as display pieces on brochures and the like) but used on the standard version of your logo, are only going to cause grief down the road, especially when it comes to its application of on typical business material. Your
logo design should be as technically simple as possible for adaptability, which just happened to be number 4 on our list…
4) Adaptability
Over the life of your company, you’ll want to plaster your logo over everything you send out. That’s the point of having a
company logo in the first place. In order to do this, you’ll need a logo that’s adaptable to every occasion and while they may look ‘pretty’ , the design gimmicks we just talked about render your logo impractical for many of these uses. Some of these
uses for your logo – checks, FAXes, embroidery, newspaper ads, invoices, letterheads, etc. Your new logo has to work on all of them. You’ll also need a quality
black and white version of your logo that can reproduce as a halftone grayscale, or in the cases of low-resolution BW reproduction, a linear version.
5) Scalability
When using your logo, you’ll need to be able to use it small. Real small. Postage stamp size. Classic example of this – over the years, I’ve designed a load of sports event posters that feature logos from dozens of event sponsors. Space only permits the logos to be featured as very small images and it’s always the
simple logos that stand out when viewed from a distance. The cluttered logos aren’t recognizable to any great degree and the sponsors are probably wasting their money, especially if inclusion on the poster is the only benefit of their sponsorship. When it comes to scalability, the
text portion of the logo is the most important, as that’s the piece you want people to remember. Scrawny, sickly text doesn’t read very well at half an inch high.
6) Color is Secondary
Colors are extremely important. Using consistent corporate colors will become part of your brand – that’s understood. However, when it comes to the design of your logo, color must always be secondary. A logo that requires color to ‘hold’ the design together is fine when reproduction is optimal – websites,
4 color process printing and what have you – but even then only if the size is appropriate as well. Logos that rely too much on color tend to blend together when used small and unless the contrast between the two colors is pronounced, will be a grey mess if used in black and white. As for low-resolution reproduction (FAXES, checks, etc) you can forget about readability completely – logos that use color as a design cornerstone usually come out as black blotches on a FAX transmission and with all their money, banks still haven’t figured out how to print a decent check.
7) Appropriate Aspect Ratio & Footprint
The
aspect ratio of a logo is the relationship between a logo’s height and it’s width. Bottom line, you don’t want a logo that’s too tall, or too wide. A square design is always best as this allows the maximum adaptability of a logo, especially when it’s being used in conjunction with other artwork (or when
designing a logo for social media) . The ‘footprint’ of a logo refers to the amount of physical space that’s required to place a logo on any page. If the footprint is ‘wonky’ – trailing design elements ‘poke’ outside the footprint – it can greatly affect the size that the design can be used at, as well as the visual impact of same. See
here for more on aspect ratios and how they control the use of your logo.
How does our logo stack up?
Like most ‘rules’ of design, not all of these will apply in every situation, and in many cases, we’ll
break logo design rules completely. Heck, even TLF aren’t perfect when it comes to following our own pointers. Not bad, but not perfect. Let’s take a look at the
evolution of our logo; it doesn’t, for example, reproduce very well at small sizes (though the type still holds up decently). Earlier versions of the logo depended on color far too much for the design so any small, or black and white usage, would see the house becoming ‘muddy’. It was so bad that we had to update our logo to the version you see here. Overall, the aspect ratio is pretty good – generally speaking, the logo will remain fairly large in relationship to the space available. The footprint is a little off (the house is much higher than the typography) but there’s not much we can do about that (the house needs it’s smokestacks). Scores pretty good on ‘uniqueness’ (the icon is based on a house, as opposed to an actual factory, and avoids the potential visual cliche that might occur if we used a typical factory representation). The logo can be used effectively on low-resolution material, but doesn’t fare too well when reversed out on a dark background. We need to put a ‘key line’ around the house to make it work which sometimes represents a problem, especially if the image is small and low resolution.
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