Design A Logo For Your Site by Jeff Colburn
There may come a time when you, or a client of yours, will want a company logo.
Logos are a good way to let people easily identify the products and services
offered by a company. As soon as someone sees it, they know whom they are
dealing with. Just think of the red "K" on a box of Kodak film, National
Geographic's yellow rectangle and the bulls eye for Target Stores. These logos
are instantly recognizable, and anyone seeing them identifies the company
without even seeing their name.
But designing a logo isn't easy. It's best to have a graphic designer, or
someone with graphic design experience, design a logo. You want to be able to
draw on their experience with design, color and composition to have a logo that
looks good. A well-designed logo will help a company, whereas a poorly designed
one will hurt a company's image.
That being said, if you want to design a logo yourself, there are several
programs you can use. The key thing is to use a program like Adobe Illustrator
that will let you create a logo as a vector graphic. A vector graphic can be
scaled to any size so that text remains easy to read and curves have smooth
edges no matter how big or small the graphic is. Remember that the logo may be
one inch square on a business card and ten feet tall on a sign or banner.
I just started using a logo for my company. Since I like the Celtic culture in
my background, I've decided to use green and Celtic knots as my logo. I'm now
using a green Celtic knot as a background for my business cards and some sticky
notes that I just had printed. I've also used this same knot on the letterhead
of my business stationary. I still have some tweaking to do with the exact
color of green I want and the knot that I want to use, but I'm very happy with
this first step, and people have made positive comments about the design.
There are also some websites that will let you design logos, that sell logo
design software, that have logo samples, or that give tips on logo design.
These are:
When designing a logo, there are a few things to keep in mind.
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The graphics should be simple and not busy or cluttered.
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Text, if used, should be short and easily read, no matter how small the logo.
It's best to only have the company name, and maybe a two or three word tag line
in the logo. It's also fine to have no text at all.
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The design should be easy to see and understand no matter how small or large
the logo is.
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When used on a website, the logo's file size should be small so it will load
quickly.
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The design should be unique so that it's never confused with someone else's
logo.
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If possible, use only one color for the logo. Using too many colors can make
the logo difficult for people to understand.
Surf the web, look at magazines and prowl the mall and stores to find logos
that you like. Start a file and take note what it is about these logos that you
appreciate. Is it the colors, shape, picture or graphics or something else that
attracts you? Also pay attention to how successful the logo is. Do you see this
logo everywhere you look or have you never seen it before? Successful logos
will be seen often, and grab your attention.
It's just as important to have a file of logos that you don't like; to be sure
you don't use the elements that bother you in your logo.
When designing your logo ask yourself these questions:
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What do I want the logo to do?
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What company image are you trying to convey?
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Who is your audience?
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What do your competitor's logos look like?
Many logos include artwork or graphics. You can design these graphics yourself,
or find them for free online. If you're looking for free graphics or
photographs to use in your logo check out my article "Where To Find Free
Pictures, Artwork And Animation For Your Website" at
http://www.creativecauldron.com/websitearticleFreeGraphics.shtml
You'll find many useful links there. You can also get graphics at art stores. I
have several clipart books from Dover that include CD's of all the artwork in
the books, and they cost less than $15.
You may want to use a special font in your logo. Be sure to use a font that's
easy to read. I decided to use a font called Papyrus with my logo. To find free
fonts take a look at these sites.
A few more tips to remember:
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If your logo will be printed at a print shop, save it as a CMYK file since this
is what most printers need for their equipment. Ask the printer just to be sure
this is how he wants it.
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For the web, save the logo as a JPG for a graphic or photo, and GIF if it's a
text only logo. If you have a logo with both text and graphics, see which
format looks best.
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If the logo will be used on a website, you only need to have the logo
resolution at 72 dpi (dots per inch). A higher dpi will not look any better,
and just make the file larger.
So do your research, decide what you want this tool to do for your business and
start designing the logo. Once you have a design you like use it on everything,
business cards, letterhead, advertising, promotional material. Make it part of
all your business communications and it will serve you well.
About the Author
Are you looking for a writer or website designer? I make the process fast, easy
and affordable. Call me NOW to find out what I can do for you! (928) 600-5400
http://www.CreativeCauldron.com
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