The Logo Lowdown - 9 Design Tips

• Andrew Vesey (Vesey Creative)
• Tuesday 23 October 2012

Be True To Yourself

Nothing builds a strong brand like staying true to your brand values. Write them out and use these during the brainstorming process. Don’t know your brand values yet? Then sort them out BEFORE your start creating your visual identity.

Keep It Simple

Get rid of as many unimportant details as you can. The less distraction you offer, the more powerful the impact.

Text vs Image

When you say 'Logo', the majority of people naturally think of an image with a company name supporting it in some way. This doesn’t have to be the case. Looking to major brand names and you find a number of them use stylised text only, while a few forego their name all together.

Black And White

Before you get carried away with colours, gradients, textures, etc - make sure your design works well in black and white. This means solid blocks of black and while only, not shades of gray. Doing this is vital to ensure the most options for logo usage. Screen printing, laser cutting, moulding, die cutting, embossing, foiling and many other techniques will require this ‘on and off, black and white’ style of design work.

Size Matters

Who cares if your logo looks great on a billboard, when it impersonates an incomprehensible blob on your business card - or vice versa. It needs to work at any size.

Following the tips above will help, but make sure to test it out. Print out different sizes from 1cm to the largest page size your printer can handle.

Think About Options

Be realistic about how your logo will be used. There will always be times when a variation of your base logo would work better. Plan now for these eventualities. Have a black only variant, and think about a white only 'reverse' logo. What about a different orientation or proportion? Sometimes you’ll need options to fit into awkward positions.

Doing this now (and putting them in your brand book) will ensure a consistent brand image and avoid issues with others changing your logo to fit their design.

Be Elemental

Look at your logo as a collection of elements. What part can be extracted and used as a ‘brand device’? This gives you an additional design element for your branding without creating another ‘distraction’. And, as it ties in with your logo, it helps with the overall strength and consistency of the brand image.

Get The Right File Types

Make sure your logo is designed in a ‘vector’ format. This gives you the best options for use, alterations and scalability.

When you have your final design, make sure you have a copy of the original EDITABLE ‘vector’ file.

Along with this, get a collection of logos to give to suppliers (designers, newspapers etc). This collection should include all variations created, in all the most common file types and colour formats to ensure you always get what you expect from a supplier. Also, remember to include the information from your brand book regarding proper use of your logo.

Use Protection

You’ve invested your time and money into creating a strong logo to build your visual identity around - protect that investment.

I won’t give you any legal advice here as I’m not a lawyer and every country has different regulations and processes. What I will say to you is, at the very least, Trademark your design in your own country.

Get legal advice and research intellectual property information available from your government agency.

You have your logo designed, protected and ready for use. Now - time to get it out there...

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