What Not To Do - Company Logo Design
If you're designing a logo, many of the things you shouldn't do can be extrapolated from lists of those that you should
. If you should keep it simple, you know that you shouldn't' make it complicated. However, the rules aren't always so clear-cut! Whether you want to refresh yourself on the best practices of logo design, or simply get a feel for the skills for your first time, we've made as list of some of the common mistakes made when designing logos for business card printing, brochure printing, and general company branding.
1. Don't design without honest feedback
This is the golden rule of professional logo design for corporate clients. However, it also holds true if you are designing your own company logo. Get others within the company to tell you what they think of it. If you have the opportunity, your customers are another good population to obtain feedback from. Ask people who are likely to be honest about how the logo looks in the context of your brochure printing, etc - empty praise is not so useful!
2. Don't use raster images
Raster images are acceptable for websites and flyers, but not for logos. Vector graphics (in the form of an eps or Illustrator file) should always be used to make the logo scalable to any size, from billboard creation to business card printing.
3. Don't use stock photos or illustrations
A logo must be unique - as individual as the business it represents. There is nothing unique about using a stock illustration.
4. Don't use fine lines or detailed images
Fine lines and detailed images will get lost in some printing jobs (like very small business card printing), and will not stay in the customers' and prospects' memories as well as simple designs will. Images should be stylised and incredibly simple.
5. Don't create logos that only look good in colour
Many publications will only print in black and white - for others, the cost of colour advertisements or printing is incredibly high. A logo that comes in shades of colour, but is indistinguishable in grayscale may look good on some jobs you send to a
printing service, but be useless on others. Most graphics editing programs have an option to remove colour and view in grayscale - do this periodically.
6. Don't use Microsoft standard fonts
Everybody recognized Times New Roman, Arial, Comic Sans, Lucida Handwriting, Book Antiqua and Century Gothic. This goes back to the point about uniqueness - your logo does nothing to identify your business as different from others if you have a Microsoft-font logo on your business card printing and brochure printing.
7. Don't use more than two fonts
As well as being unique, the logo should create a clear impression. Using more than two fonts might make a business look different to the rest but that is because of its resemblance to a train wreck. Using different forms of the same font is fine - bold and roman, roman and italic, bold and condensed, etc - but you would generally stick within the same font family. If one font is fancy, make the other clear and plain.
8. Don't copy designs
Again, you want something unique - copied logos are the ultimate in commonality. This type of plagiarism mightn't be as easy to track, but it can still have consequences. In the meantime, having business card printing and
brochure printing that looks the same as someone else's serves little purpose.
by: Robert Stevens
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