Per usual practice in every business, having a business name and some sort of graphic identification is the primary endeavor to introduce the business to the public. Picking a business name is part of branding efforts, designing a logo for the business is the next step after the business name. Although, there are some businesses that barely have a logo.
Logo might be not so essential for the business and it is less critical than the business name that can transform into a trademark while logo from time to time needs to evolve. Some designers will be disagreeing with this premise however, the business name is the identity and the logo is the face. As the business name does not change, the logo evolves every certain period.
Almost never a business changes its name without affecting its commercial existence. When a business changes its name because of the merging or change of ownership or any other reasons, it is considered as a new entity. Changing the logo or rejuvenating the logo into a better form is a different case. Refer to the case of many, Shell for one famous example.
For every year, Shell evolves its logo but it keeps the name/trademark. Like a person who is keeping the name but the person’s face changes over time.
Although a logo is not a real must, having one is not a bad idea. Just put an analogy of talking with someone over the phone for so many years, knowing the person’s name but not knowing the person’s face. Now, creating a logo for the business is just like putting the face into the person.
There are several types of logos, some say 7 types some other say 9 types and some other say 10 types of logos. There is a monogram logo (lettermark), wordmark logo (logotype), pictorial mark, abstract logo, mascot logo, combination mark, emblem, logo symbol, etc. Regardless of the claims on how many logotypes are there, what are they called might not be that important and relative in nature. It is just semantics. What is important are how we design the logo from the scratch and how we implement the logo into practice.
Designing a logo is not drawing a painting. The process of a good logo design takes time and study. Some designers design logos in a mediocre way and shallow. The logo might be designed with an artistic sense and impressive for common eyes at the first glance. A logo needs to survive much longer than its first day of existence. The logo becomes problematic for an accurate reproduction when the original components are misplaced or even no longer available.
Creating a good logo requires research and study, The research on what category the business is in, are there any corporate colors already in place, what the competitors have for their logos, etc. And the study of what the logo should convey, the company culture, messages to bring across, etc.
A logo can be extremely expensive or just a price of a burger. The thing that costs so much of a logo is not the sketch but the process. If you go to a website like Fiverr to get a $5 logo, you are very likely to end up with a mundane logo. Although, on a very rare occasion a client receives a great logo for paying peanuts. Refer to the case of Nike where the logo was paid for $35 in 1971 which today’s conversion is less than $300.
It is not always the case that expensive logos are good logos. Refer to the case of Symantec with a rumor that the logo cost over $1 billion, but later debunked. The whole $1 billion budget was spent out not only on the logo process but the branding efforts and logo implementations. The VeriSign logo is embedded into Symantec logotype causing too many pixel components that render problematic in reproduction and scalable works. It happens again and again, expensive spending does not guarantee great logos. Consequently, cheap spending almost always resulted in mediocre outcomes.
If we are talking about what to avoid in designing a logo, there could be too many to mention before we can come up with an idea of what a good logo is. Rather confusing with the don’ts, let’s focus on the dos. Here, I list 10 helpful guidelines on designing a good logo that can be standardized over a stretch of application.
- Simplicity, a good logo should carry the simplicity instead of complex graphic elements and itty-bitty details. Imagine when a logo that has too much detail components and complex needs to be scaled down. Every detail in the logo will be merged and creates a clutter, the logo becomes messy. A good logo can be scaled down up to less than 1 inch and still keeping its integrity.
- Philosophy, a good logo carries a meaningful idea, messages of the entity. Although, there are occurrences when designers just make things up once they finished designing logos only to justify the logo they design. Yet, it is better to put in mind what idea and messages we need to convey to anyone who gets the glimpse of the logo. When we start from that point, it will be much clearer than we go to the drawing board and start doodling without clear direction.
- Solid Color or contrast colors, no gradient colors, no close similar colors stand next to each other. Colors in the logo is eye-catching, however there are numerous examples beautiful logos are not necessarily a good example of standardizable logos. It is advisable when designing a logo, we start in black and white approach. The question to why is there are implementations that are “color-blind” which is colors might be unable to apply. The perfect example of this argument is a black and white facsimile, yes today we have facsimile feature in color printers (laser or inkjet). One bad example of the logo is when a designer decides to use gradient colors which creates a problem when it comes to certain applications, embroidery as one example. Gradient colors and similar colors stand next to each other pose similar problematic issues on applications. Solid contrast colors are better, even when they come in gray-scaled applications, the difference of colors is still conspicuous.
- Versatility, think about the implementations when designing a logo. A good logo should be easy to adapt any application and medium whether the logo is applied on paper, fabric, metal, wood, plastic, etc. Complex logo with so many details or gradient colors will cause troublesome situations.
- Memorable. As the second identity after the business name/trademark, logo should be recognizable and stand-out. Too many details and complexity hardly to achieve this objective.
- Long-lasting. Uniqueness is a key, avoid following a trend. A good logo should stand on its own, stand-out from the crowd. Average designers tend to follow a trend causing the logo has a very short lifespan. Avoid using available fonts in the market when possible. Copyright claim is one issue.
- Standardization. Consistency is a must across the logo implementations. A logo may come in a few alternatives in an application like a full form and stackable form for certain application where the full form would be too long for the medium. It is a luxury for a company to have a graphic standard manual (gsm) or other designers might call it different for the logo application manual. In the principle, graphic standard manual helps and guides how the logo to be applied. All information such as standard colors complete with the cmyk/rgb/hex colors instruction, the scalable sizes, the fonts, the measurement, the do’s and the don’ts, etc. Why the graphic standard manual is a luxury, the answer is to create such guideline requires a long process and study. In some cases, it costs more than the logo work itself.
- Vector-based. Photoshop was not created for such design work, yet there are people creating logos using Photoshop which is a no-no. Photoshop is not a vector based application. If you are using Adobe CC, Illustrator is a perfect solution for logo design. There are a few other vector based softwares for this purpose, such as CroreDRAW, Vectr, Sketch, etc.. There are free vector based design softwares available. Good logos are saved in vector-based file without losing its integrity.
- Balance is not a symmetry. It is optical when we see a logo and we feel some feeling that the logo is tilting to one side like Pisa tower. I don’t mean that a logo should always straight up, what I mean with balance is a logo should perceivable balance. This is a subjective matter and it is not always agreeable. As for me, it is hurting when seeing a logo with so many elements on one side and one small element, not even perceivable when scaled down, on the other side.
- Space. Creating a logo in a “canvas” does not mean we must fill all areas in the canvas. The sentiment of more is merrier does not harmoniously working together with balance and simplicity. Especially when it comes to the smaller size of the logo as previously mentioned in point 1 where the logo becomes cluttered and messy.
I have seen bad logos designed by designers who graduated from expensive and prestigious design colleges. Some of these designers just followed what the clients wanted without objections, some others were simply do not understand the concept of designing a logo. Hopefully, this article is helpful in creating a better logo.
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