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Eight Critical Elements of an Effective Logo Design, part II.
by Jeff Kear
# Practical, Usable and Adaptable
What this means is that a logo design should be practically designed so it can be affordably and easily used in a variety of mediums. For example, a logo?
* Shouldn?t be designed with so many colors that it costs you a mint every time you want to print business cards or letterhead.
* Shouldn?t be designed with a gradient (such as a picture), which is difficult to reproduce.
* Should be created so it can be easily converted to black-&-white.
* Should be created using Web-safe colors so your online logo looks the same as your printed logo.
# Originality
A primary task of a logo design is to clearly distinguish a company from its competitors, which means a logo design should be unique, one-of-a-kind and ownable (meaning the company should be able to trademark the logo with the U.S. *
Patent and Trademark Office and officially own the design as their intellectual property).
# Works Within Industry Conventions
Often there are consistencies among logos in certain industries, and following these conventions can help customers more easily identify what you do or what you sell. This doesn?t mean you should sacrifice originality, but it does mean you (or the firm creating your logo design) should be aware of patterns among logos in your industry and somehow incorporate these consistencies into your design.
For example, did you realize that the main color for the logos for Microsoft, IBM, Dell, Hewlett Packard and Intel is blue? The color blue is associated with stability and progress and has long been a standard color among high-tech companies. So if you were a technology company, you would probably want to incorporate blue into your logo design to take advantage of these positive built-in associations.
# Captures the Personality of the Company
Finally, a logo design should clearly express a company?s identity ? who they are, what they do, how they work, how they want to be seen by the world.
The best place to start here is to think about your company as if it were a living being with a personality. What would that personality be? Conservative or daring? Traditional or modern? Sophisticated or fun? Serious or whimsical? Once you have narrowed down the traits that define your company, you are then ready to start exploring the images, colors and fonts that best express these traits.
All told, an effective logo design takes into account all these factors and puts them to work to create an image that customers won?t soon forget. |
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