Top 10 steps to professional looking logos
By Judy Litt
Think you can save yourself money by designing your own logo? Maybe yes; maybe no. While you might save money in the short run, if you have to have your logo redesigned in a year or two because it's not getting the job done, you've probably shortchanged yourself. But if you are bound and determined to tackle this on your own, at least follow a few simple rules, and you'll end up with a more professional looking logo:
1) Hire a designer
I'm a designer, so of course I want you to hire a designer to design your logo. The truth is, however, that designers spend their time thinking in fonts and visuals, learning the rules of typography, and so on. Your logo may be one of the first things people see about your company, and what does it say if it looks cartoonish? Starting a business requires planning and spending some money.2) Interview a few printers
I probably haven't convinced you to hire a designer yet, so please, please, please, look around for a few printers. Ask them for a tour of their company. Ask them which presses are good for what type of printing. Ask them how they accept files, and what sort of software files they accept. Ask them how they want files set up. Ask them about fonts. By now you'll either be ready to hand the job over to a designer, or at least you'll know what you need to do.3) Use the right software
Designers do not design logos in MS Word or Paintbrush. One reason is printers don't usually accept these files. Another reason is that they don't produce vector graphics. Vector graphics can be enlarged or reduced without loss of quality. Designers usually use Adobe Illustrator; some use Macromedia FreeHand. Both of these programs have pretty large learning curves. You may find CorelDRAW! more intuitive, but you may have a harder time getting someone to work with your file.4) Start by looking around
Look at professional magazines. Look through the yellow pages. Study ads, billboards, brochures, etc. Find competitors' logos you like, and try to figure out why you like them. Make a clipping file of the logos you do like. Then start brainstorming what's unique about your own company. Designing a logo shouldn't be fast; a good logo should last your company at least ten years.5) Choose at most two fonts
One of the biggest mistakes amateurs make is in their choice of fonts. I can't teach you about typography in a short article like this, since that can take years, but if you stick to one or two fonts at the most you're less likely to go off the deep end. Try to find one font you really like and use two different weights: a normal weight and a bold weight.6) Choose at most two colors
Like fonts, color is another area where amateurs often go wrong. They want a rainbow. It's not that a rainbow might not be appropriate for your company, it's that it's going to cost you when it's time for printing. Sure, you can get cheap full color business cards these days; but what about stationery? Please, just one, or at most two colors; and yes, black is a color.7) Ditch the swooshes and the bevels and drop shadows
Want to really blend into the background? Put a drop shadow on your logo. Bevel it. Use a swoosh (think Nike logo). It's not that these effects can't make good logos, it's that they've saturated the market, and in the hands of someone with little design training, they're likely to scream amateur.8) Be cautious with clipart
You can design a really nice logo without any clipart at all. If you feel you absolutely must have a graphic, do yourself a favor: limit yourself to just one graphic. Don't try to create a logo with three or four different graphics; they'll look like three or four graphics someone slapped on because they liked them. And if you really want to look professional, alter that clipart in some fashion.9) Don't stop at two or three designs
If you were to hire a designer, they might only show you three or five designs. But they've probably created dozens if not more before they narrowed it down to just those few. Don't stop at two; keep going until you have at the very least ten. The longer you take, the better your logo will look in the end. Remember, it's not a race.
10) Do some market research
Once you think you've designed "the" logo, do a little testing. Show it to your family and friends. Get their feedback. If you have colleagues or other professionals whose opinions you trust, show it to them. Don't be afraid to go back to the drawing board if the feedback isn't positive. |
