How to create a good logo
10th May 2008A logo is a very important instrument, who's job is to represent your business, so put a lot of thought into it. Your logo will be the face of your company. Once you decide to go with something you are going to want to stick with it.
Be creative but logical
You are going to have to be both creative and logical when creating your logo. It has to have a good "look and feel" but it also has to be flexible enough to use in different mediums and sizes. It needs to be able to scale down to fit on your business card and still be clear and readable as well as scale up to look good and clear on a big billboard from a distance. To be able to resize your logo properly without loosing clarity you will have to design it using vector graphics. If you have colors in your logo it also needs to work in black and white as you might not always have the option to opt for color print. Strive to keep your logo as simple as possible and at the same time distinctive.
Evoke emotions
Your logo needs to evoke emotions and help build your company's image. What is your business into and what emotions do you think should be linked to it? What do you want people to feel when they see your logo? Colors and shapes are associated with emotions so find out what emotions they could evoke before using them.
Using graphics or not
There are two ways to go about this. One is just using a specific font, of your choice, to write your company's name, plain and simple (actually called logotype), or you could think of a symbol (actually called logo) to go with it. Here, again, it's important to use vector graphics. Do not use a photograph or an image of any sort, stay away from pixel based graphics as they can not be resized without loosing clarity.
My advice to you is not to make your graphic too big compared to the text, your company's name, because that can cause problems when scaling it down. If the symbol is too big compared to the text, the text can become too tiny and thus unreadable in smaller sizes. Another option is to have variations of your logo in different sizes.
Designing your logo
If you have no idea what you want your logo to be like I would suggest you have a look at other logos. Just have a look around you, you will see them everywhere. You can also search for logos on Google or any other search engine. Just type in "logos" or "logotypes" and hit enter. Having a look at other logos might give you some ideas that you could use while creating you own.
Now get a pencil and paper and do some brainstorming, think about what your company does and what it stands for. Write it down. Think about what could represent just that and write that down as well. Try to visualize your logo and start making sketches. You don't have to be good at drawing or know how to use a vector-based illustration software, if you don't have the skills you can always hire a designer to do the final job for you. If you really are not able to sketch something out, give the designer your notes and explain what you want. If you have your sketches you can show the designer exactly what you want rather than relying on them to create the face of your company.
Create a logo that sticks out from the crowd and that will remain on people's minds!
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