What makes a good logo design

What should you look for when deciding to have a new logo designed for your company, organisation, or simply just for your own personal web site.

In my opinion, the most important factor is to have a graphic logo design that is totally unique. However, if you bear in mind how many hundreds of thousands, if not millions of logos there are in the world right now, it’s not always that easy to achieve a logo design that is totally unique from all of the other designs in the same field, as your business. Just think about the number of web sites that are being launched every day, most of which usually have some form of logo at the head of all of their web pages. Currently it’s estimated that there are over 100 million web sites!

Not only is it important to have a unique logo design, it’s also a good idea not to have a design that’s over complicated. Think about the most famous logo designs such a Nike, Coke, Ford, McDonalds, they’re all simple designs. Not only does it make them more memorable but also think about all the other mediums that these logos are used for such as signage, packaging, televisions ads, clothing, web sites, stationery… the list goes on. Think about your own design and how much easier and more importantly cheaper that it would be, if you decide to use your logo for lots of other types of mediums. So a simple logo design makes it more portable, as well as being much more memorable and striking.

Along the same lines, think about the number of colours that you’re going to have in your new logo. A good logo is a logo that looks good in black and white as well as in colour. Think about the costs involved when you decide to have your logo used in other ways and how it becomes more expensive, the more colours you use. I always think logos that use 1, 2 or 3 colours look the most effective. The colours used for your logo will often be used in your marketing material, or perhaps will be the colour scheme used in your website, which is something else to consider.

I would also avoid having graduated colours in your design for the costs involved and also difficulties with other mediums, for example embroidery. If the only use for your logo is for your online business, then it shouldn’t be a problem. You could always have another version designed with flat colours for other general usage.

A good tip is to write down all of the uses that you can think of that your logo will be used for, don’t just think about the present, think about the future and what plans you have for your company. What would your logo look like on the side of a forty-foot container? Go through the list of different scenarios that your logo will be used for and make sure that it will be suitable for each.

Make sure that your logo is vector drawn. A vector drawn logo can be scaled to any size without any loss in quality. Think about that forty-foot container! The most common vector formats are EPS and AI, which is the native Illustrator format. All of the logos that I design are created using Adobe Illustrator, which is the industry standard and will always supply both EPS and AI files amongst other formats to cover just about every use.

In summary it’s worth taking the time to think about your logo and it’s usages, it could save you a lot of money in the future if you need to have your company logo re-designed.

What makes a good logo design?