A Great Logo does more than set you apart

If you have a logo that is easy to read, easy to recognise, and can be used in every imaginable application you will be able to achieve your branding more efficiently.

At the moment you may only need a logo on a business card, letterhead, and a website but who knows what the future holds.

When choosing your logo a good thing to keep in mind is the height and width ratio. If the design is too tall disproportionally, the logo will only fit certain applications. A square logo (or close to) is more adaptable and often visually strong.

Great Square Proportioned Logos

If you think about many of the biggest companies out there, a majority would have square proportions to their logos. That doesn’t mean you have use squares, but having a squarish and proportionate model is more adaptable and can save you many design headaches.

Other important factors to consider:

1. Your company tag-line or slogan will be incorporated with your logo in some situations so you need to make sure they work together.

2. Know who your target audience is; things that work with one demographic will probably not work with another.

3. Make it easily recognizable.

4. If possible, use a logo where the base colour can be changed easily for different situations. You might be advertising in a local Sports Teams end of year book and the book is blue and your logo is green. Being able to interchange colour is vitally important.

5. Does it look attractive from a distance? I was walking past a pub this morning (I didn’t stop) and they had three café wind barriers out the front. One was from a huge brewery, the other two were from micro breweries. All three have great logos, unfortunately for one of the micro-breweries I couldn’t make out the logo from 15 metres away because it was so complicated. I know their drop well, yet even I couldn’t recognise it. How on earth is someone that is not familiar with the company possibly going to register the image?

6. Making sure your logo can be printed in black and white and still look good can certainly help in many situations. Especially in the start up phase as printing in black & white is cheap as chips compared to colour. Going for a two colour or a four colour logo will make a huge difference in printing costs.

7. If engaging a designer ensure that you own full copyright to your logo. Otherwise you are not necessarily the rightful owner of the logo and future legal problems can occur. Here is a collection of Explainafide’s Logo Designs.

8. Make sure you use your logo wherever possible. Ensure all correspondence that leaves the office does so with a logo attached, be it envelopes, letterheads, emails and so on.