Small business challenge - creating the perfect logo
June 1st, 2010So you’re about to start up a small business and you need a logo. Or you got a logo done on the cheap a few years ago and it’s terrible and now you have the funds to do it properly!
If you want to get your head around what constitutes a great logo before briefing a design team on your new logo, read on!
When we design logos we always start with four key elements of great logo design in mind. A great logo should be:
1. Memorable
Memorable logos tend to be simple. You want people to be able to snapshot your logo in their mind so that they can easily recognise it at a later date. Recognition is the first step on the vital road of establishing branding for your company or organisation.
2. Must look good both in colour and in black and white
Lots of people like lots of detail in their logo (see point one). They also like funky gradients, drop shadows and other “cool” stuff. “Cool” stuff has its place, but not in a logo. Anything that impacts on the ability of your logo to look equally as good in black and white as it does in colour should be discarded.
3. Must look good BIG and small
Your logo needs to be “scalable”. It needs to look great on a billboard and it needs to look great on letterhead. When it’s made really tiny and printed on promotional material (say a pen), it STILL needs to look good. Which brings us back to simplicity! If your logo isn’t simple, it’s not going to scale well.
4. Must have some relevance to your industry
You don’t want to confuse people so you don’t want to attach an icon to your logo that has no relevance to what you are all about. This doesn’t mean you have to be super obvious about it. For instance, if you are a painter, you don’t HAVE to put a paint tin in your logo, but any iconography needs to be suggestive of painting.
Some examples
I found a great blog post showcasing the “best logos of 2009″. All of the logos in that post really ARE great logos and for the most part, fit all the criteria above. For copyright reasons I can’t reproduce them here so I have included a couple of Swish designed logos below that tick all the boxes above!
