subject: Logo Design Tips: 4 Things to Tell the Artist [print this page] Unless you yourself have the artistic skills for making a great logo design for your company, you will most likely have to employ the services of a graphic artist. The designer may be a company employee or even a third-party, outsourced artist.
Keep in mind that when working with someone else for your logo design, the artist must have enough knowledge about your company. That is in addition to having the right set of graphic design skills so that she or he can make the intangible ideas come to life in your logo.
You need to coordinate closely with the graphic designer to ensure that the designs accurately reflect what you have in mind. When working with such an artist, you need to emphasize four important things: simplicity for the sake of memorability, representation and branding, strong consideration for the audience, and scalability.
Simplicity for Memorability. Your company logo doesn't need to be overly simplistic. Although designing a simplistic mark can work sometimes, as it does in several cases, it really only needs to be simplistic. The rule of thumb is to include enough elements to convey the complete message about your company but to exclude enough elements to make the logo interesting. In other words, avoid complicating your business logo. Simple is beautiful and memorable. People will also tend to ponder more on a simple design than a complex one that tends to leave out the imagination.
Company Representation and Branding. Branding, in a general sense as used in business, refers to your efforts to create emotional responses among your audience towards your company or your products and services. Your graphic artist must be able to create a visual design with such a goal in mind. This means that the design must convey through lines, shapes, and colors what and how the company wants to be perceived by its audience.
Audience Impact. Both the artist and you must evaluate the type of crowd that is expected to be exposed to the business logo. Different crowds have different ways of perceiving visual material. Your goal, then, is to find the optimal combination of graphic design elements that will appeal strongly to your target crowd and at the same time accurately convey your intended message.
Scalability. Scalability can occur in at least two cases. The first case is that of color. Your corporate logo must have a color scheme that can be scaled down to one color without as much as losing the appeal of the overall design. Most good graphic artists begin creating logos from single colors, then incorporate a two- or three-color theme once the monochrome design has been decided on. The second case is that of size. Your corporate logo must retain its visual impact and must still be recognizable even if it is resized to less than the size of a thumb.
As you and your logo design artist work together on your company logo, make sure that it is simple and memorable, represents both the brand and the company, appeals strongly to your target audience, and can be scaled up or down.
