More Strategies for Logo Design
posted by Peter J. Patsula
Considering that in human cognition visual processing is the most important channel for gathering new information, it is no wonder companies spend thousands, if not millions of dollars for the right logo. A logo is like a compressed story of your company … backed by a promise.
When designing your logo keep the following in mind: What do you want your customers to expect and feel when they see your logo?
How Much Does a Logo Cost?
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Mike Crawford, president and founder of Multi Media Communications (www.mccom.com), strongly recommends outsourcing the design of your logo. “[You] are in the business of creating a product or service, not in the business of designing a logo,” he says. Service companies on the web offer logo design for $200 to $600 U.S. Outfits at the upper-end of this price range will generally create several designs, from which you can select the one you prefer. Although these services can be quite helpful in a cash crunch, keep in mind how frequently you will use the logo on letterhead, web sites, advertising, and product packaging. If your logo design requires more research, expect to pay $1,500 to $3,000 U.S. Design Strategies Inc., recently reported that it charged $13,000 for a logo design created for a software company that had involved extensive market research, 64 different file formats, and a 15-page usage manual that included instructions and standards for company-wide implementation of the logo. On the other hand, a multinational corporation merger might spend upwards of a million dollars or more for a logo to represent the new company.NOTE: Creating a company logo that is unique increases the likelihood of gaining trademark protection. Assistance from a trademark lawyer is invaluable when conducting a trademark search. Otherwise, your trademark logo runs the risk of infringing upon another company logo or trademark symbol.
Start by Looking in Your Fridge
To start thinking about an appropriate logo for your company, look at some well known corporate logos. Open up your fridge and start examining your yogurt, mustard, beer, and anything else hidden deep in back. What makes some logos stand out more than others? Next, head down to your local supermarket with a sketch pad or digital camera. Once again look for those logos that stand out. After that, check out your yellow pages for companies similar to the one you wish to start.
Using Clip Art
If you plan to operate a local consulting or contracting business, or perhaps even a small corner cafe, establishing a strong corporate identity may not be high on your list of the most important things to do and spend start-up funds on. Fortunately, a high quality solution can be found by selecting the right typeface for your company name, and then exploring high quality royalty free clip art. By experimenting with multiple clip art images, and combining various parts of each image to your design, you can create a unique logo. Consider the following design for a fictional company, Lion Hill Lounge (this logo took about an hour to create using MS Word and Photoshop).
Keep in mind that even a drastically altered clip art image may be impossible to trademark. However, you might consider using your design as is until your company gets well underway and then later, when cash flow is stronger, replace it with something similar, yet completely original. Some more tips when using clip art:
Cut out distracting lines. Remember to keep your images simple. In the above example, the “lion” was simplified along with the “hill.” If you wish to show a complex image like a bowl filled with salad, make sure you simplify it to the point that it has as few lines as possible, but is still easily recognizable as a salad bowl.
Experiment with typography. The above logo uses the “Architect” typeface. However the “L” has been rotated slightly using MS “Word Art.” Larger dots were then added to the letter i’s. Typography manipulation is a strategy also used successfully by big companies such as Dell with its twisted “E” and Microsoft with its chipped “O”.
Keep the design usable. Don’t make your logo too vertical. A high and narrow logo requires more ad space to get a legible size for the logo. The eye is also better at noticing wider items to some extent, probably from generations of our ancestors staring at the horizon and looking for animals to hunt.
Use Vector Graphics. Vector graphics shrink and expand without loss of detail (e.g., the .wmf format). They also require less computer memory. A bitmap image can easily take up 2 to 10 MB of memory and loses detail when expanded.
Keep colors simple. A B/W logo is much easier and cheaper to print. If your logo does use color, make sure it also looks good in B/W. If using color, also try to stick to CMYK-colors that exist within the wider RGB color range. Doing so will keep your onscreen colors closer to the actual printed colors.
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