How To Use Colour In Logo Design To Effectively Communicate The Right Message

When studying colour theory we are given an understanding of the colour wheel and the harmonious relationships that can be forged between these brothers of reflecting light… It is here that we are given a cheat sheet on how to use colour effectively to communicate the right message.

Below we use this knowledge to go behind the scenes of colour theory in logo design while looking at various case studies of logo designs that use these principles. Enjoy.

This wheel, that shows the relationships of colours, is a handy little tool to understand. Without going into any great detail of how the colours of the wheel are established (which is pretty interesting to know), we’ll just tip or toes into the water.

The panels that have an outline above, with their linking lines, show the relationships colours have. For example, complementary colours are the colours directly opposite each other. In our illustration above (the first wheel highlights the relationship), red and green are directly opposite, so they’re complementary. Just as the blue on the left and the yellow on the right are complementary, the orange and light blue, and so on.

These aren’t the be-all and end-all of colour combinations obviously, but they’re good places to start when choosing what colours you might want to use for a project. As you’ll see in the following examples, sometimes you might use three out of four tetrad colours, or go for an analogous harmony but stretch it out one more and skip one.

The wheel is our simple guide into the world of colours – something to use when you find yourself in a place of bother, or something you may choose to ignore. With that in mind, sometimes one may decide to ignore the wheel, but work with colour meanings and psychology instead. It should be noted that it isn’t exactly a science. Ask a hundred people what red means and you’ll likely get dozens upon dozens of different answers – none wrong. But again, it’s a great starting point and gives you insight into how your audience may instinctively perceive something you’ve put together.
Colour Meanings & Theory

Colour can make or break a design so it is vital that you know what colours mean and what they can communicate. Below are some ‘meanings’ of colour. [Source]

    Red evokes aggressiveness, passion, strength and vitality
    Pink evokes femininity, innocence, softness and health.
    Orange evokes fun, cheeriness and warm exuberance.
    Yellow evokes positivity, sunshine and cowardice.
    Green evokes tranquility, health and freshness.
    Blue evokes authority, dignity, security and faithfulness.
    Purple evokes sophistication, spirituality, costliness, royalty and mystery.
    Brown evokes utility, earthiness, woodsy-ness and subtle richness.
    White evokes purity, truthfulness, being contemporary and refined.
    Gray evokes somberness, authority, practicality and a corporate mentality.
    Black evokes seriousness, distinctiveness, boldness and being classic.


This is a great place to start. This is as straight as it can be – direct complementary colours, no ifs, no buts. Yellow is directly opposite blue, so there isn’t a lot to talk about in this regard really, other than the yellow is a little orange, but let’s not too picky. Let’s have a look at the meaning of the colours.

Visa WheelBlue is a colour often associated with trust, loyalty, royalty, friendliness, wisdom and peace. It can also be associated with the less noble feelings such as depression, but given the context, not an association easily made—especially with our optimistic, wealthy and joyful yellow sitting calmly on the shoulder of the logo.

Remember, colours have a multitude of different meanings for different people – it’s all about context and the brand as a whole.

Wisdom, wealth and trust — what more could one ask for from a company at whom we throw wads of cash?

When it comes to tetrads, things can get a little dicey. Giving four colours equal footing is risky business, so it’s often better to have dominant colours and weaker colours – the Samarra’s logo is a good example of such a situation.

Our two dominant colours dance together as a perfect complementary pair, with the two others giving them a little support as minor players.

This isn’t exactly a perfect tetrad – our two minors are complementary to one another, but not perfect partners for the two majors in regard to a tetrad. They’re close, but off by one panel. The lighter orange is closer to red on our colour wheel and the blue is closer to green. In fact, the major colours are a little off as well, but being tints, we’ll give them a little room to move to help explain the harmony. It is a great example of taking colour theory as a base on which to work from but not necessarily to hold as gospel.

How could I possibly write on colours in branding without making mention of one of the most effective uses of colour in history? No one short of the Nazis, terrifyingly enough, has managed to use a combination of colours in such a recognizable and powerful way.

McDonalds WheelWhen I was younger I saw a documentary in which the McDonalds logo was discussed. I particularly remember a man making mention of the feeling that the red and yellow evokes – hunger. At the time, this idea fascinated me for at least a moment as I remember wondering how that could even be. Being a child, I probably put it down to magic or elves or.. something. It’s fun being a kid. Flash forward however many years and we have Wikipedia, with, under it’s entry for colour psychology; “Studies show that red can have a physical effect, increasing the rate of respiration and raising blood pressure; red also is said to make people hungry.” So maybe not elves after all.

Red can understandably cause a feeling of hunger—it’s the colour of the flesh, blood and health – maybe it isn’t only a modern day thing, maybe it’s an evolutionary association we have? Red also cues thoughts of speed, which is what fast food chains pride themselves on.

Then there’s the yellow. Again, Wikipedia informs us that yellow is the colour of joy and happiness, sociability and friendship. With their focus on children on the playground and friends grabbing a quick bite whenever out, yellow seems like an obvious choice. If you can associate your business with being part of any outing routine, you’re doing something right.

Ironically, while this combination has undoubtedly influenced many, many fast food chains, it’s also the colours of danger, death and panic – although some do think of these when eying the golden arches. There is an example further down of how pre-existing connections can be ignored, with the FedEx logo.

This is a fantastic combination of colours – they scream Australia. Sunburnt deserts, beautiful beaches, nature and sun – it doesn’t get much more Australian than that. Symbolism: check.

Koloroo Wheel

Light colours that overlay and dance with one another in the shape of one of our treasures. If you’ll notice, the red of the head and feet of Skippy contrast well with the light blue that dresses the name. If the colours were in reverse order within the illustration, this one might have come off as tacky – looking as if the intent were to have the colours graduate between the illustration and the text. Not a great look in my opinion – might even have looked like a printing error. The contrast shows a deliberate thought of how the illustration and the text would interact with one another visually.

Red and green are perfect complementary colours, with all those between in our logo hitting almost all other colours (in a 12 panel colours wheel) between them. A lovely use of riding the spiral of colours in an effort to evoke passion (the red), growth (the graduation of size and change in colours being in step) while representing nature (the leaf) and gentleness – not often the feeling one gets from a technology company.

Colour harmony theory might not work in favor of this combination, and nor does colour psychology to any great extent, no matter how many drops I try to squeeze from various sources around the web.

The colours just work. Neither is weaker than the other, neither one quite what you’d expect from a shipping company. The branding is the opposite of what companies following McDonalds did – it doesn’t go with the expected. It isn’t the standard blue and red of mail delivery.

Choosing the opposite of the norm, going against the standard or expected, helps set a strong contrast between you and them. It helps you stand out. While everyone else might be blue, you’re purple, them red, you orange. Not a great departure from the norm really, but one strong enough to make a difference.

The symbolism of the colours works well for the client too. The blue symbolises tranquility, trust, coolness, wisdom and mobility. The green; life, nature, spring, youth, good luck and vigor. The red is associated with passion, energy and strength. I don’t want to say perfect, but for a sporting company—well, you’ll excuse me for thinking it might just be.

The colours are light without being too vibrant and shocking, helping ground the company as a serious business. This combination of colours is one you could probably easily find on anything that is aimed at children, from movie posters to toy packaging. But the subdued, almost subtle colours, gives this logo some feet on the ground.

It all just fits, doesn’t it?
Rules are Made to be Broken

Clearly, the rules that colour harmony lays before us aren’t laws. At best, the are merely guides, to be followed if one chooses, but also ignored or used as nothing more than a starting point. The same can be said of the meanings behind colours. Different cultures see the symbolism of different colours through different eyes. Different, different, different. But this isn’t a bad thing by any means.

Red and blue were traditional colours for mailing, then FedEx came along. McDonalds set a standard in using red and yellow for the fast food industry. This is where the beautiful spark of creative thinking starts to ignite. Nothing is set in stone. It use to be that light blue was the colour of girls, and pink the colour of boys. Things change.

The designer is in a position of power because of this. If something is considered and understood, then a monumental shift can occur in the result. Just because every other business in your client’s area uses green, it doesn’t mean you need to develop a logo of green. Discover why they use it, their reasoning for it, and see if you can give the same effect with red, or blue or orange.

In closing, it might be best to say that if there were a strong platform on which the mantra ‘to break the rules, you must know them’ can sit upon, then surely it is the platform of colour.

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10 Rules For Designing A Great Logo

One of the biggest foundations of your brand identity is also deceptively small: your logo. Without a good logo design, your brand image can fall flat fast. Here are 10 tips to understanding and creating a logo design that will stand the test of time, and stand head and shoulders above your competition.

Usually half of our days are dedicated to brand identity and logo design.  For you to stand out amongst your competitors, you must have a strong brand identity. That brand is ‘You’. It shows others what you stand for, what you believe in and why you exist.  Let’s take a deeper look at the big picture and what it really takes to design a great logo.


1. Define Logo Importance
Creating an iconic brand identity with your logo is an absolute necessity. A good logo needs to be recognizable on the spot, and deliver an immediate and positive association with your company and products.

2. Learn What Makes a Good Logo
A good logo has to be unique and distinctive. The design must be artistic, while remaining simple enough for easy reproduction in a variety of sizes and media. Your logo communicates a message about your product, so make sure it’s a positive message.

3. Appreciate the Challenge
To the industry outsider, they seem like a simple little project. In reality, however, a good logo takes a great designer who can think outside the box while still delivering the right combination of simplicity and drama.

4. K.I.S.S.
You’ve probably heard of the K.I.S.S. method: Keep It Simple, Stupid. This is a great mantra to chant while designing logos. A simple logo is memorable, versatile and easily recognizable. It’s unique without losing accessibility to the general public.

5. Focus on Versatility
Is your logo still recognizable if it’s printed in black and white? What about if it’s miniaturized, or blown up to poster size? Being prepared up front for these likely eventualities will save a lot of potential redesign issues later on.

6. Avoid the Trends
You don’t want a design so cutting edge that it’s outdated in six months. One of the hallmarks of a good logo is timelessness, not trendiness; research logos that have shown impressive longevity and study those designs for examples of an impressive logo shelf life.

7. Make it Memorable
It’s surprising how memorable a simple, elegant design can be. Think of the Nike swoop, or the McDonald’s golden arches. Neither is complex, yet both are instantly recognizable. Even more telling, neither logo has changed significantly in all the years of their respective businesses.

8. Ensure Relevance
Although your logo should be creative and eye-catching, it should not be a design that has nothing to do with your product. For example, the Evernote elephant is a great representation for a productivity suite designed to help you remember and organize things. It makes sense, and connects directly to their product, just as your logo should.

9. Deliver an Immediate Association
Your audience should immediately associate your logo with your product. Take the Apple logo: rainbow, silver or polka-dot, that logo is unmistakable. Can your audience associate your company to your logo that quickly?

10. Work With a Designer That Follows These Rules
Don’t be fooled by the deceptive appearance of the humble logo; take the time to find an artist who will meet your needs. A good designer will take the time to ask plenty of questions about your goals and your company, and understand exactly how important a logo is to your success.

By following these ten tips, you’ll not only have a better appreciation for the process that goes into designing a good logo, but also a good idea for how to choose the right candidate to create your next trademark. In our current world of marketing immediacy, an instantly recognizable logo is almost as vital as your product itself.

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Logo Designer: Education Requirements and Career Information

Logo designers require some formal education. Learn about degree programs, job duties and requirements, and employment and salary information to see if this is the right career for you.

Essential Information

Logo designers are graphic designers who create distinctive branding that represents companies or products. They might work for a design firm, publishing house or advertising agency or as a freelance graphic artist. A bachelor's degree in graphic design is usually necessary for entry-level positions. During their studies, students learn about basic principles of design, computer design software and marketing concepts.

Required Education	Bachelor's degree in graphic design
Projected Job Growth (2012-2022)	7% for all graphic designers*
Median Annual Salary (2013)	$44,830 for all graphic designers*

Source: *U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

Education Requirements to Become a Logo Designer

Employers generally prefer bachelor's degree holders for entry-level designer positions, though more technically focused positions and assistant roles might be available to those who complete an associate's degree program in graphic design. Relevant courses include graphic design history, composition, drawing, typography, photography, computer graphics, advertising and corporate marketing concepts.
Most programs include courses devoted to the development of an individual's professional portfolio, which is commonly required of applicants for graphic design jobs. Elective courses in art history and modern art may stimulate creativity, and courses in psychology might be helpful for understanding consumer behavior.

Career Information for Logo Designers

Job Description

Logo designers create graphical and typographical symbols that represent a company or product in presentations and on websites and packaging. During the course of design development, a graphic artist confers with clients to discuss concepts, prepare initial sketches of ideas and layout the logo design, often using computer illustration software. Logo designers might work with researchers who study a target audience, as well as with advertising specialists to effectively produce a logo that achieves brand recognition.

Employment and Salary Information

A graphic designer who specializes in logos can work as a member of a corporate design department, design firm, advertising agency, publishing house or Web development firm. Many designers also work as freelance artists.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), employment of graphic designers was projected to increase 7% from 2012-2022, and these professionals accounted for approximately 194,000 jobs overall as of 2013 (www.bls.gov). In May 2013, the BLS reported that graphic designers earned a median annual salary of $44,830.

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5 Ways To Prep Your Video Interviewee

As a video pro, I know that a story can go from good to great with a the right soundbite. However, not all of your interviewees are the most polished, confident, and camera-friendly subjects (I am one of those people). As the interviewer, you have tremendous influence over how the interview/testimonial goes. It is a role with great responsibility, but you have more control over the outcome than you might think.

So, to get your interviewee in the right zone that fosters the right soundbite mojo, here are a few tips to prep them for video glory.

1. “This is not live.”

Assure your interviewee that if they do get tangled up in their words 30 million people are not going to instantly see it. Explain to them that this video will be edited and it is YOUR job to make THEM look good. Tell them they can relax and they take their time to collect their thoughts before giving their response if needed. Make it more of a conversational situation, tell them to ignore the cameras, just be themselves and share their story with you.

2. “Put the question back into your answer.”

Most videos cut out the interviewer asking the questions, and putting the question up in text before the response doesn’t always look professional. So, ask your interviewee to incorporate the question into their answer to give the viewer context to what they are saying. For example, if I ask: “What was your experience like in the _____ academy?” A response like: “It was really great, I learned a lot of valuable skills that have excelled my career,” is aggravatingly lacking specifics that can serve as a narrative to the story. So, coach your interviewee to phrase their response with the question included. Like so: “My academy experience at ___________ was great, I learned a lot of valuable skills that have excelled my career.” That answer can stand on it’s own and can naturally carry the story without more disconnecting voice overs or text.

3. “Don’t hate me when I pause us during a take.”

5 Ways To Prep Your Video Interviewee image IMG 2914.jpg 300x200 Get used to this fact right now: something will go wrong while recording video. Especially during the interview. Distractions like: noises, lighting issues, someone walking through the background, noises, tripod bumps, video cards running out of storage, and more noises. So, set that expectation from the beginning that you will most likely encounter something that requires a retake. If you prepare them for it ahead of time it won’t seem quite as traumatic or jarring when you have to interrupt them mid take because something ruined the shot.

4. “I’m not an expert on this topic, so forgive me if I ask something stupid. I’m here to learn.”

When someone is nervous about going into an interview, an interviewer who seems clueless and incompetent makes the situation exponentially more uncomfortable/irritable. So, defuse a possible bomb in advance and save face by addressing any lack of credentials up front. Usually the interviewee will then be happy to enlighten you; and it puts them in a position of control and can instill confidence. A confident interviewee is more likely to provide fuller, solid answers to your questions.

5. “Keep your answers concise.”

Math time! 2 minute video = 120 seconds. Four interviewees = 30 seconds max of talk time each. Five questions per interview allows 6 second responses… whoa. Obviously that is not the formula for every video, but the point is explain to your interviewees that they’re not the only person (unless it’s a one person interview) in the video and they need to keep their answers “concise” in order to accommodate other perspectives in the story. Now, you don’t want to limit people’s responses and have them leave out key details or characteristics, so it’s a fine line to walk. So try this. If their first take was too long, say: “Awesome content, slightly long, let’s try to tighten it up.” Remind them of any key words you heard the first time, and just ask them to make it shorter. Worst case, you have two different takes you can pull from.

So, before you hit record on the camera next time, run through these tips with your interviewee. When you prepare them for the bumps, set the right expectations, and give them a little bit of coaching you can create a dynamic team that produces some beautiful soundbites.

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8 Essential Elements to a Comprehensive Brand Identity

Does your company have a brand identity that is more than just a logo? While a logo is a good place to start, you should consider building your “visual position” to be something larger. Building a system for your brand allows you to meet the demands of different media, while still presenting a cohesive identity.

For example, web site design only allows a limited number of font choices, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a corporate typeface for printed marketing materials. In fact the more elements you can establish as your basic look and feel will mean that variations from that scheme won’t make your brand identity disintegrate.

    Logo or wordmark. A logo is a graphic symbol, whereas a wordmark or logotype is just the words of your company or product name set in a specific, fixed way. These elements should be professionally designed and set.

    Different logo “lockups”. While your logo should always be rendered consistently, you will need variations based on placement and usage. For example, you may need color and black and white variations, you may need versions for horizontal and square applications. But they all should have the same essential qualities.

    Key colors. A corporate color palette is usually defined by the colors in a logo. Often these are one or two colors only, although some are more complex.

    Additional color palette options. In addition to the colors in your logo, what other colors complement them? This can be loosely defined such as: bright and bold, pastel, or cool colors. Or, they may handpicked from a color swatch book. These additional colors are often what really brings together (or makes a disconnect) from one point of contact to the next.

    Corporate typefaces. Choose just a handful of fonts to be used whenever there is printed materials. Make sure these are available on all the computers that will create these documents.

    Standard typographic treatments. Your typographic identity should include ways of handling key types of text, perhaps a consistent way of styling headlines or pull-out text. Work to make these similar from one application to the next. It may be the way you write your URLS, or the way you capitalize your headlines.

    Consistent style for images. You don’t need to use the same photos over and over again, but all imagery should have a consistent look and feel. Maybe the photos are brightly lit and the subject is looking right into the camera. Or, the photos have a subtle color palette and the people never look at the camera but are engaged in their activity. Photos could be close-ups, soft focus, or crisply detailed. You don’t need to use photos! You can use line art, illustrations or just charts and graphs. Whatever you choose, use a consistent style in all materials, whether printed or online.

    Have a full library of graphic elements. These are all the small details that really build a branding system. It could be a background texture, a line style treatment, a use of white space or color blocks. These are the areas where do-it-yourself-ers start to suffer, and where a professional graphic designer can pull together a cohesive look for you.

When you have a comprehensive and broadly built graphic identity, it creates a foundation for a rock solid brand identity.

The truth is, that once you start making things, your identity standards are going to be tested.

For example, item #5 (choose a corporate typeface) is not going to be fully applicable on your web site (unless you’re Ikea and choose Verdana for everything). But if you have seven other branding elements that are strongly apparent in the web design, the site will still be able to promote your recognizable brand. If on the other hand, those other graphics are not well-defined and well-used, each application you create dilutes rather than builds a comprehensive brand identity.

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Interview: Graphic Designer Stephen Doyle

National Design Award–winner Stephen Doyle talks to Departures about the future of design.

The first project Stephen Doyle’s fledging firm took on in the mid-1980s was designing the cult magazine Spy. Since then, Doyle Partners’ work has included branding and logos (Martha Stewart, Cooper Union), editorial art (The New York Times, The New York Review of Books) and book covers (Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire, Stephen Colbert’s I Am America). In his spare time, Doyle builds intricate paper sculptures out of lines of text cut from books like Kafka’s Trial and Machiavelli’s Discourses, and last year he was honored at the White House with a National Design Award. Lately his studio has turned to architectural collaborations, working on design elements for Heritage Field, a new community park opening this fall in the Bronx (on the site of the former Yankee Stadium, which was torn down last year). And then there’s the exterior of the new shark tank at Coney Island’s New York Aquarium, set to open in 2015.
You seem to approach your subjects with what one might call the “euphoria of ignorance.”
Absolutely. To think your way out of a problem, you have to surrender to possibility and potential and imagination; otherwise it’s too overwhelming.

And what does ignorance afford you?
With my clients I often use the word “naïveté.” You have to think, What is it like for the user? How is someone who is uninitiated in this kind of thinking going to respond and react? We get to deal with things on a very human, personal level.

How do you go from Heritage Field and baseball parks back to designing covers for books by [Russian émigré novelist and Lolita author] Vladimir Nabokov?

It’s all about storytelling. Sometimes film actors come back to Broadway just to practice their craft. So to do an occasional book cover, like the stories of Nabokov, where I try to make the type come alive and tell a story, that’s where I get my kicks.

What’s the connection between design and storytelling?

Design is all about storytelling. Design is communicating with an audience through images and language and color and type and scale and nuance and subtlety and texture and tactility. Design is all those things and how they affect our senses.

What, to you, are the iconic images of American design?

The funny thing that springs to my mind is being in a Russian town called Saratov, on the Volga River. Horse meat was on the dinner menu, and afterward we were served four sticks of Wrigley’s gum on a silver tray. First the horse, then the chewing gum. I can’t get that image out of my mind: being in such a distant place and having something so familiar, so American, so iconic as a stick of gum.
The other thing, and this one is a little sad, is the Saarinen TWA terminal at JFK. When it was built, it expressed such optimism, such futurism, such buoyancy of spirit. Now JFK is a mess, worse than airports in some third world countries I’ve traveled to. These days we don’t have that same kind of gesture toward the future. I’m sad that New York hasn’t built any bridges in quite some time.

So that could be a design in the future—would you be interested in helping with that?
Just as long as I don’t have to do the engineering. Where are our big civic gestures? The optimism of building a bridge. We seem to be missing the chance to reimagine how we live.

Designing Heritage Field

The new Yankee Stadium, which opened in the Bronx in 2009, was built on land once occupied by a city park, so when the old stadium was torn down, in 2010, its site was set aside for a new park, opening this fall. To the design of Heritage Field, as the park will be called, Doyle Partners has added subtle yet powerful touches to tell the story of the stadium’s heritage. Done in blue threads of artificial grass, an outline showing the exact position of the original baseball diamond will be sewn into the turf. The site will also have binocular-style viewfinders showing 3-D images of historic events that took place there—Nelson Mandela’s 1990 visit, the 9/11 memorial—while other dates will be commemorated on hexagonal paving stones. “We’ve infiltrated the space with storytelling,” says Doyle.

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Can Logo Services Make Your Mark?

 With the unemployment rate at a 26-year high, it’s hard to get a brand-new job. At least it’s easy to get a brand-new brand.

Disheartened job-seekers deciding self-employment is better than unemployment can get a professionally designed logo for their budding business from several companies. On the assumption that a jobless entrepreneur would need to hold down costs, we tested four logo-design providers offering packages under $150. (This eliminated industry leader Logoworks because the Hewlett Packard-owned company’s least-expensive package is $299.)

We told our design providers we wanted a logo for a company named DiskFix Solutions. We said our hypothetical company “helps people transfer or retrieve data from hard drives.” We also said we wanted a slogan—“easy remedies for hard problems”—to be part of the logo. We gave the designers little input except that we wanted the logo to look “high-tech.”

Keeping in mind that picking a logo is highly subjective, we mainly tested for ease of ordering, value, range of choices and customer service. We showed the final logos to Glenn Christensen, assistant professor of business management at Brigham Young University’s Marriott School of Management. Dr. Christensen has written extensively about corporate branding and consumer reaction to trademarks and logos. In the cases where we received several initial logo designs from a single company, we showed him only the final design.

Within five hours of ordering our $99 package from LogoDesignGuru.com, we received a phone call from the company giving us the name of our designer and her phone number. Overall, we were very impressed with the company’s customer service.

Because this package allowed for only one concept and one revision, we felt somewhat constrained. Joe Witte, executive vice president of the Langhorne, Pa.-based company, later told us this “starter package” is aimed at buyers who know exactly what they want—a proviso clearly stated on the company’s ordering page. As for the logo, Dr. Christensen liked the typography but found the design too generic. “There’s nothing in the logo that communicates what the company is,” he said.

Our $99 package from Logo Loft also allowed us just one design and one revision. Aaron Carr, president of the Montgomery, Ala.-based company, later told us that the package is best for buyers who have a sketch or a concrete idea of what the logo should look like. In a nice touch, our designer called us directly and walked us through several design templates on the company’s Web site.

Regarding the finished logo, Dr. Christensen liked the typography and said it evoked high-tech, but was mystified by an icon on the lower left. Our designer later told us it is an abstraction of “the hard-drive needle that reads the info off the drive’s platter.” While we would have liked more initial choices, we felt we got our money’s worth.

At $67, the “Superior Logo Package” from LogoDesignCreation.com was the best value. We received three very different initial designs from which to choose and unlimited edits once we picked the one we liked. In addition, we received an animated logo to use on a Web site.

Dr. Christensen said the icon, which depicts a disk, was the best graphic element of all our logos. But he thought the understated typeface was “not that compelling and is probably a negative.” Had we been more pro-active, we could have asked our designer to substitute a more forceful typeface.

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2014 Logo Trends Report

If home is our first place, and work is our second place, then mobile screens have definitely become our third place. Smart phone use has increased from 21 percent in 2010 to more than 63 percent today, and with 83 percent of all Americans online regularly, that percentage of mobile users is bound to keep edging up.

The fact that so many people now view the world through a window the size of a business card has spelled an inevitable change in logo design. It used to be that minute favicons had to be kept extremely simple: Now, as a rule, logos must be as well, but that doesn’t mean boring. Designers continue to push back and evolve the meaning of “simple.”

That logos have to be scalable has always been understood. But our perception of “small” has changed, in some cases “tiny” is being rather generous. Dimension and detail are necessarily removed so that these logos read properly on mobile screens. Designs have become more and more flat. Surfaces are plain and defined by mono-weight lines.

Of course, there’s a limit to this flattening out and removal of information. Designers and audiences alike need an escape from all things digital. They need a chance to decompress and take a deep breath in a place that provides shelter from information’s frantic pace. Everyone needs to step outside and bask in sunlight, not screen light. And so the pendulum starts to swing back.

People seem to be more and more drawn back to what is real, whether that is perusing handmade hats on Pinterest, exploring other cultures or our own family histories, or reconnecting with stories from mythology or our childhoods. By bringing back what is human-made, we gain a sense of control over the digital tide that threatens to overtake us.

Designers have responded to the mobile screen’s harsh requisites in a variety of ways, many of which are detailed in this year’s Trend Report. Artisan crafting is ever more important as evidenced by the “Hand Type” solution in abundance this year. Colors are brighter and lighter. Typographic solutions, which can be absorbed immediately with no symbolic interpretation, are ever more important.

Designers also have found ingenious creative workarounds, such as introducing long shadows to very flat designs, suggesting that dimension is still there. Logo designs may be reduced to line work (see the “Geo Wires” trend below), but now every facet of the design is visible. These designs are simpler, but now somehow more complex. In other designs, like this year’s “Pompons,” solutions are less reliant on exact, specific shapes, instead communicating with energy and emotion.

As with all things, it’s about balance. When anything pushes people too far one way, the natural reaction is to push back. Perceptive designers will always be able learn from watching the pendulum as it swings between people’s wants and needs, and technology’s gifts and demands. As Proctor & Gamble’s global marketing and brand building officer Marc Pritchard said, “Creativity without insight is worthless.” Today, insight means learning how to move design forward by turning digital limitations into communication advantages.

We also saw plenty of:

•     Mountains, both representing geographic entities as well as a metaphor for achieving great heights or reaching a summit of success.
•     Acorns a plenty, as a return to nature and the promise of potential and greatness from an auspicious beginning. These demonstrated planning for the future and as a reminder, the best time to plant a tree was yesterday.
•     Bees in every form, and a few hives as well. A versatile symbol of fertility, industry, dedication and teamwork. All the critical ingredients for a sticky reward delivered without a sting.
•     Digital controllers, whether for a game or otherwise, seem to symbolize the ability to manage any challenge at the push of a button or flick of the wrist.
•     Symbols are being adopted by consumers at an extraordinary pace, and many of these from digital devices or associations with that industry. Clouds, Wi-Fi waves, loading wheels and a rush of icons from our mobile devices are providing the analogies for the next generation of logos.
•     Faceting cannot be stopped as it continues to evolve. Since it first hit the scene in 2010 it has sprouted more offshoots than a hydra at a knife fight.
•     Flat, overly simple logos are giving realism a breather. Skeumorphic design is so yesterday. Unfortunately designers are breaking the surface tension by letting long shadows creep onto the faces of their work. So if we’re living in flat world, what’s casting the shadow?

The 2014 Trend Report

At the writing of this report there are more than 212,000 logo on the LogoLounge website, submitted from designers all over the world. The last year’s submissions, 24,500 in all, were examined for this report.

In studying these large collections, trends are noted. The intention of this report is to share with you what we see, not to make suggestions for what you should do. Often a trend we see may be an outgrowth of a direction identified in a previous report. Proof that the product of this industry is part of a healthy evolutionary cycle.

Perhaps the greatest value of these reports is to enable designers to map out the trajectory of specific styles, concepts, techniques and solutions. Once a chain of design evolution is identified, it is much simpler to forecast and design the next step in the sequence. We encourage you to visit www.LogoLounge.com where the last decade of reports can be viewed in their entirety. These resources and the trends identified here, combined with your unique interpretation and ingenuity, may fuel the beginning of a truly exceptional logo.

Special thanks to some of the world’s best identity designers for their generous suggestions that helped enhance this report, including Brian Miller, Brian Wiens, Adam Anderson, Stephan Smith, Ty Wilkins, Alen Pavlovic, Brett Stiles, Valera Namzov, Jeron Ames, Denis Ulyanov, Sherwin Schwartzrock, and others.

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How to deal with a brand identity crisis

The most successful brands have strong and distinctive identities that can be described in one or two words, and they are rarely fazed by the competition.
But if that's not the case with your brand, you might well be facing a "brand identity crisis". So how can you recognise and deal with this before it's too late? It's time to give your brand a little therapy.

The warning signs. People are confused about what your brand stands for and who you are. You can’t see how your brand is different from the competition – or, worse still, you feel your only option is to copy it. When a brand isn’t sure for whom or what it stands, it’s likely its customers won’t either.

Be consistent. Avoiding a brand identity crisis is all about being consistent across every touchpoint, so consumers know what to expect and where. Ensure your brand has one "personality" across all the channels used. Ask yourself: what one word describes your brand, and how do your customers describe it?

Don’t do a BlackBerry. Playing catch-up in the tablet and mobile market and hiring singer Alicia Keys as a creative figurehead, then parting ways with her after just one year, has done little to make BlackBerry’s brand identity stand out. Enough said.

Consider the impact of each change. Look at what matters most to the brand and its customers, so you can decide what needs to happen first, then second and so on. You’ll avoid complicating matters unnecessarily, and your (hopefully loyal) consumers will know what to expect.

On your marks. Your consumers want to know that you are ready when they are, so you will need to get the timing right when launching anything new or different – don’t fall into the trap of over-delivering.

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A Logo Speaks a Thousand Words

Nothing defines a company's identity as effectively as a logo. A simple white swoosh can instantly trigger thoughts of Nike Shoes. A pair of golden arches encapsulate everything about McDonald's from Big Macs to Chicken McNuggets.

A well designed logo can give a company lasting brand recognition through imprinting a single, memorable image. It can become a catalyst for increasing exposure for their service or product and building their customer base. Logos are the first thing any company includes on printed advertisements or TV and Internet spots. For that reason, creating a logo that functions as a tool to build the company is important.

In a competitive marketplace, small business owners need to get creative if they want to stand out from the crowd. Using a professional logo design firm to bring business logos to life can give a small business owner a means to market their product or service in an exciting and creative manner.

Professional logo designers treat business logo design as an art. Intense creativity guides the whole design process from start to finish. Logo design works best when the design team and the company work as partners in creating ideas through brainstorming, sketching out those ideas and refining the content through feedback.

Specific principles should guide how an idea turns into an effective business logo. It helps to have a thorough knowledge of a company's target audience before putting ideas on paper. Is marketing directed to college students? Seniors? Families? Demographics of a customer base influence every part of a logo from text size to color scheme.

Brainstorming helps sort through the demographic information and form concepts for a logo. It can be as simple as writing down a list of words a customer associates with the company to doing mind mapping where a company name can serve as a central point that branches out into associated ideas, words and concepts.

Business logo design should consider how basic elements affect a company logo. A small business owner should always consider what image they want to create with their logo and examine each element carefully to see how it fits into that ultimate goal.

Different colors can carry different psychological meanings. The same is true with shapes. When incorporating colors and shapes into a logo, a professional logo design team takes into account how these elements will influence the message a company logo conveys to its target audience.

Designing effective business logos is all about using the right aesthetics. A company logo should possess a sense of visual balance so that one element does not overwhelm another. Proper use of white space can make a logo catch a person's eye and imprint a lasting image with them. Too much text or graphics can create an assault on the senses and leave a potential customer turned off by all of the visual noise before their eyes.

Using contrasting elements can make a logo emerge from the background in a magazine advertisement or a TV commercial. Coca-Cola embraces this principle perfectly with their iconic white script set against a red background. A logo working with contrast can combine alternating shapes or text of different colors and sizes to create an iconic image.

Repetition can be a powerful tool in helping a logo stick with a potential customer. A color scheme, graphics, images or text used consistently on a company website, for example, will help a person to associate those specific elements with that company.

How elements are aligned in business logos can determine if they create a memorable image or serve up a bland design. Imagine MasterCard without the intersecting colors and lines in the two background circles. Would a pair of complete separate circles make the same impact? Unity and proximity can play a huge factor in what image a company logo portrays. The distance between the elements suggests the nature of their relationship and creates an impression of that company in a person's mind.

For a small business owner trying to attract positive attention for their company, sometimes simplicity can be the best policy. A simple visual design can be effective in imprinting a particular logo in a customer's long-term memory and bring them back to that brand. Making things too complicated can drive customers away from one company and into the fold of their competitor.

A professional logo design firm can help companies achieve beauty and simplicity in crafting business logos. These designers are equipped to create all types of logos – font-based logos centered on a company name, illustrations representing the product or service a company offers and or abstract graphics connected to the company brand. Final logos culled from the design process can be used in any medium and on any product to create a lasting brand awareness that any small business owner covets.

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9 Keys to Building a Stand-Out Brand Identity

Brand identity is the combined effect of visual elements in your marketing materials. A basic brand identity kit consists of a logo, business card, letterhead, and branded envelope. This basic set of materials can be extended to include a website, brochure, folder, flyer, or any other professionally designed pieces.

A successful brand identity is built around the following 9 key characteristics:

•     Unique in "look and feel" and message about your business. Make sure that your business's graphics stand out from and cannot be confused with those of the competition, and that the ways you talk and write about your business are uniquely yours as well.
  
•     Repetition helps potential clients—and current clients—to remember and relate to who you are and what you do in your business. Experts say that it takes somewhere between 6 and 12 "impressions," or contacts with your business, for customers to truly remember you and connect with your business.
  
•     Consistent use of your logo, tagline, and materials and what you say about your business. You will only be able to build a strong brand for your company by designing unique visual and verbal elements and then repeating those elements through all of the materials that you create.
  
•     Memorable elements help your business to stand out as well. You'll be able to create brand memorability through consistency, repetition, and uniqueness of your graphics and materials. Make your graphics memorable by creating a unique logo and using a consistently strong Visual Vocabulary. Create memorable text by using alliteration (repeating similar sounds, such as using words that all start with the same letter), repetition, unique word combinations, and lively imagery in your copy.
  
•     Meaningful graphics make your company's message come to life through symbolic graphics, colors, and type choices in all of your marketing materials. Meaningful text will express what your business is really all about, and help to give some depth to your developing brand. And, perhaps more importantly, your audience will be able to understand the meaning in your graphics and text — it will be accessible to your target market.
  
•     Clear graphics and text communicate your message in an understandable way. Make sure that your graphics are crisp, clean, simple, and meaningful. And make sure that your text expresses your point and is not confusing — that it explains your point well.
  
•     Honesty in your brand identity materials. If clients do engage with you and then you don't live up to the brand promises you made in your materials, then they will feel alienated from you and your company... or worse. This can really damage your relationships and your overall brand, so make sure you can stand behind your brand and deliver on your promises before you distribute your branded materials.
  
•     Personality for your business helps make sure that you don't look like everyone else, so that potential clients can immediately tell that all of your branded materials are coming from your business. If you're the owner of a one-person business, your brand identity might resonate with your own personality. If your business is larger, or if you want to make it appear larger, you can create your own brand personality to connect with your potential clients.
  
•     Professionalism in all things, from the quality of your graphics, to the way your text is written (proofreading is essential!), to your personal presentation: the way you talk, dress, and speak. Professionalism in customer service and in the way you treat people you meet is also important. Follow through on your offers and promises.

If you include all of the above elements in your brand identity, you'll have a business look and feel that will really help your marketing messages to be taken seriously: one that will enhance your overall brand.

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Six Things to keep in mind when designing a logo

So you fancy yourself a Paul Rand or Saul Bass and want to design some logos for iStock? Great! You've come to the right place! Logo design needs to begin with a great idea or concept, backed up with some jedi-like vector skills to bring it to life. In this article you'll find some design and technical tips to get you started and keep you on the right track. I've included some important things for you to think about as you are creating, as well as some reminders on how to keep your files technically sound for submission to avoid the dreaded "Subpar" rejection.

Thought and planning are a huge part of Logo design: preparation is key. We've prepared a set of considerations here for any illustrators ready to plunge into Logos. Keep the following in mind during your planning and throughout the process.

Please note: The 'good' versions of logo design seen below were each designed by some of our amazing logo contributors. They'd never dream of submitting anything like the 'bad' files you see here, which we created for illustrative purposes only!

It All Starts With a Great Idea

Start by selecting a Business Category or something that inspires you. Try to envision who the client will be or what kind of company or business may want to buy your logo. Creativity sometimes strikes when you combine a couple of ideas. For example, you may decide on creating a logo for a security company. For this business category you probably would want to convey trust, strength and reliability. This can be accomplished by choosing appropriate subject matter and using style, colors, weight, balance and shapes. The idea could be a bear with strong angular or masculine shapes and bold, dark colors combined with a sturdy font to finish it off.

By clearly visualizing who your client is and with some forethought, research and planning, the end result should be an appropriate symbol that immediately identifies the company, and clearly communicates the product or service. This is absolutely key to a successful logo design and should always be foremost in your mind while conceptualizing your design.

When you have your concept, start sketching it out to quickly come up with ways you can execute the idea. Starting in black and white can help ensure that your design is clear, legible and reproducible without any distracting features. Adding great color, style characteristics, or subtle effects will help make your design unique to stand out amongst the competition. Add some type to bring some context to your design and choose a font that compliments the symbol and communicates clearly. To ensure a successful logo remember to keep your design, Simple, Memorable, Timeless, Versatile, and Appropriate.

Reproducibility

It's extremely important that Logos are created with versatility in mind. As the main component of a company's corporate identity, the logo acts as the cornerstone of their visual brand. This means it must be reproducible using a huge variety of formats and processes while maintaining the integrity of the logo as it is utilized. Logos may be printed on anything like small business cards and pens to extremely large billboards and signage. They need to work well using traditional print methods like offset lithography and screen printing for T-Shirts, as well as other things the buyer may want like rubber stamps, stickers and embroidered golf shirts. Of course, it must also look fabulous on screen for use on websites and other pixel based media. It's a good idea to test your logo file at a monitor resolution of 72ppi at an inch or so wide to see what issues may pop up.

Here are some things to watch out for to keep your design from ending up on top of the reject pile:

— Consider carefully how much detail to add to your logo design. Lots of small shapes and skinny lines should be avoided as they could disappear or print very broken and rough when reduced to small sizes.

— The white spaces, or negative spaces, between shapes should be consistent and not too close together or they may fill in causing a loss in the definition of objects.

— Gradients should be used selectively, creatively, and only when they enhance the design. At one end, if tints are too light, they can disappear when printed and only show up as white. Conversely, dark tints can fill in to solids causing the logo to look muddy and unclear which can happen easily when printed in a newspaper. Also, gradients may not work with some reproduction processes that can not use continuous tone.

— It's easy to get carried away with our design by adding tons of fun and interesting things but the bottom line is it has to reproduce really, really well. In the end, ask yourself, "Does this help or hinder my design?" If the logo communicates the intended message just as well (or better) without it, take it out.

The excessive use of detail in this logo will seriously compromise its ability to be reproduced. Fine details like the sharp pointed tail and thin lines will disappear when printed at smaller sizes and the small white shapes will fill in losing their definition. Outlined type with extreme gradients will print poorly as well, making the type hard to read at any size. On the right, the elephant is drawn with bold shapes, leaving ample white space in between for definition. Just the right amount of detail is used to help convey the idea and the solid flat colors used will ensure that this design will reproduce great with pretty well any process. I wouldn't recommend using multiple colors like this in the type all the time but in this case it works to make it fun and exciting.

In these examples the differences are noticeable mostly through the addition of a heavy black drop shadow and the application of gradients to every shape. Gradients can work when used sparingly but in this case they are far too severe, and would look dreadful at a small size. The tiny hairline strokes on all the shapes will also be problematic especially when this logo is printed as a 4 color process job. The example on the right is clean, clear, and looks great at any size.

Reversals. What the heck are these?

Nope, we don't want you to create a mirrored image of your design and it is not necessarily a negative. A Reversal Logo is simply a version of your file that is created to ensure it looks great when used on black or dark colored backgrounds. Logos with dark or mid-tone level colours may not be visible so another version is needed. Again, its all about versatility so the buyer can use your logo design anywhere they want. A common method of doing this is by changing all of your colors to white. It doesn't have to be all white, as light or bright colors may be used, but by using white, you are keeping it neutral and making it usable on a large spectrum of dark colours. It also gives the client an added bonus of having a 1 color version of the logo if you chose to not create a solid Black Version or created a Black Version with tints of grey. Solid, 1 color logos are great to use as watermarks or as a reference for a die-cut or foil stamp.

Please do NOT place any kind of colored box behind your design. "But no one will see my design!", you say with despair! Yes, it looks invisible as it is now an all white logo in an all white document. Don't worry, we've thought of that! When you upload your white PNG file (with transparent background) it will show up on a nice black background conveniently supplied by iStock so your wonderful creation will be available for all to see.

The concept of a 'reversed' logo design can be confusing if you've never designed a logo before. In the example on the left, there is a black box placed in behind the design. While it may look nice on screen, this could look awful if the logo was placed on top of a photograph or different colored background. The logo itself has also been 'reversed' by mirroring the design! The example on the right shows an all-white logo selected in Illustrator: No background necessary. This design is ready to place onto any color the client wishes.

Color Palette

Never underestimate the power of color! There is so much emotion inherent in color and its psychological power can be extremely persuasive. Warm, cool, neutral, vivid, complimentary, analogous, soft, light, dark, bright, saturated — all of these color types can be used effectively to enhance our intended message. How we combine these colors is also equally important as they can create contrast, balance, and weight to help convey our idea.

Have fun choosing colors for your design and experiment with many different options and combinations. Color selections need to be appropriate for the subject matter. For example, it wouldn't be a good choice to use red for a dentist office, that's scary! Red is alarming and can symbolize blood. Instead, choose professional, calming colors. Soft blues or browns may be more appropriate.

Full color logos, or designs that use a large range of CYMK colors can look really great, but can also be very expensive or difficult to reproduce. Consider keeping your design to a couple of colors to keep costs down, and use tints of those colors when more levels are needed. Smaller color palettes can also work to keep logos from looking too busy and cluttered. Be inventive with your color choices and step out of the Illustrator default color swatch trap, there’s a whole world of color to explore!

The sample on the left is using far too many colors than is necessary, making it very busy and more difficult to define the individual objects. The use of fluorescent and uncomplimentary colors makes the overall composition unappealing and less attractive. Using default colors straight from the swatch palette and plain black for the type make the design much less sophisticated than it could be. The sample on the right utilizes a beautiful main palette of custom mixed complimentary colors of orange, green and brown. They all work together in harmony to bring the cute kitties to life while adding a warm and cozy feeling. The use of dark brown for the type keeps it complimentary to the graphic and maintains a good contrast necessary for legibility. Using the same orange that's in the kitties for the "petcare" type offers additional visual interest and helps separate it from the main type. This helps give the eye a break and enhances legibility as well.

Simple is good right?
That's a yes and no answer. YES, logo designs should be simple to effectively communicate an idea and to be easily reproducible. NO, they shouldn't be limited to simplistic stars, circles, ovals, squares and rectangles. It's important to keep logo graphics relatively simple to make them useable in many applications and print processes, but not at the expense of style! Chances are if you create something too simple it may look like like hundreds of other icons out there already. Not good! A company's logo has to work to differentiate them from their competition in order to be successful, and they don't want to buy logos that they could make themselves using Illustrators Shape Tool.

Think about what you can do to add you own style or flair to make your design unique. When designing simple logos it's important to find ways of adding subtle but highly effective visual interest. You can do this by giving equal consideration to both positive and negative space and the careful placement of each shape. Use different perspectives can add tons of visual interest putting a unique spin on your design. A little twist, shape or tapered line here and there can simulate motion or other effects making the design much more dynamic than it would be otherwise. Simply styled directional devices (shapes that lead the eye) can add real excitement. Get in there with the Pen Tool and add some personality!

The left example is very simple in its execution, using only basic square and circle shapes. The placement of all of the objects has left the overall composition looking static and boring while the plain black type is under considered, effectively ensuring that this logo generates about as much excitement as flossing your teeth. The example on the right however, has cleverly used positive and negative space to create the plate. The entire logo is comprised of only four shapes by creating two simple arcs to help define the plate and by letting the cutlery bleed off the bottom edge. The combination of these design choices and using Tragan for the font, give it a simple, classic, stylish feel appropriate for this audience.

Choosing a Typeface

OK, you've got your award winning logo design in the bag and now its time to add some text and a name. This will help add context to your design and give the buyer a clear idea of how it may be used (like it doesn't already do that!). A quick reminder here to remember to research any name you would like to use to help avoid any potential copyright or trademark issues. You must make sure it is not currently in use by any other company and a quick search on the internet should help you along the way. A safer bet is to stick to generic terms like, Construction Contractor, Attorney Logo, Retail Business, etc. It's not necessary to add a tagline or brand statement but if you do, make sure you have done it in such a way that it works well with the logo and any other logotype and that it is clearly legible without being too small to read.

Next step, read the font licensing agreement for your chosen typeface. Yes, these can be long and boring but it's important to make sure you have the rights to use this font in a manner that is compatible with the sale of your logo to iStock clients. Specifically look for the Usage Agreement section that states it allowable for Commercial Use in this way. Just because your font was 'Free' does NOT mean its OK for Commercial use! Also, 'Free' does not necessarily mean 'good'. Use quality fonts to add to your great logo design to keep the whole package looking good.

Choose a font that is appropriate and looks great alongside your logo. This can mean choosing a font that has complimentary shapes to match the style of your design or match the mood of the idea. A very professional business such as an attorneys office, would require a more formal looking font perhaps using caps or small caps. A font for a children's clothing store could use a more casual, friendly font using lowercase letters. Try not to choose fonts that are too funky or illustrative. Yeah, they're fun but they can seriously compromise the legibility of your logo and are really more for use in headlines, posters and other media.

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Shattering 10 branding myths

COMMENTARY. Some executives and business leaders understand what branding is all about. Most don't. It's got to be one of the most misunderstood concepts in business and I have no idea why. It's not really complicated.

Still, if you ask 10 business people to define a brand, you'll get 10 different answers.

Is it a promise of product performance, an assurance of quality or service? Or is it the perception of value or satisfaction through association with a company or product? Is it a sensory, emotional, or cultural image of a company? And is it really a source of lasting competitive advantage?

It's actually all of those things, and more. I know that sounds complicated, but it really isn't. Let me explain.

The concept of branding has evolved quite a bit since the days of the branding iron, mostly because the business world has changed a lot since then. Modern day branding works sort of like this. Every company has stakeholders like customers and shareholders. Brand reputation is what those stakeholders think and feel about the company.

It's a function of all the experience those people have with the company, its products and services, and includes influence from lots of different sources, including product features and performance, customer service and satisfaction, PR and the media, even online search results and social media, as well.

If people are aware your company exists and sells a certain product, they might consider it for purchase. If your company has a strong positive brand reputation, eventually you end up with loyal customers, the holy grail of branding.

If you want to get technical, you can talk about brand strategy, platform, positioning, promise, personality, perception, identity, hierarchy, metrics, all sorts of arcane stuff. But frankly, I'd leave all that for folks that do it for a living.

To boil it down to a simple concept, a brand is very much like an image or perception of a company or product. As a result, it's a function of a considerable number of factors, which is probably why there's so much confusion and, as you might expect, loads of myths. Here are my top ten:

Myth #1: Naming and logos are expensive and worthless. Yes, some companies go way, way overboard on naming and logos, but in my experience, just as many, if not more, under-scope it and screw it up. Since you've got to have company and product names and there are a ridiculous number of pitfalls, it's a good idea to do it right, but that need not be expensive and it's certainly not worthless.

Myth #2: Big brand loyalty is dead. The Internet killed it. While it's true that the Internet is a great equalizer in many ways, in other ways, it has the opposite effect. For example, Google isn't really a superior search engine to Bing, and yet Google is one of the most highly valued global brands, primarily because it's become an internet verb. Apple has tremendous brand loyalty and value because it makes consistently great products. Big brand loyalty is still very much alive and well.

Myth #3: Branding only matters for consumer companies. No, no, and no. Most companies don't market to consumers but to other businesses. Lots of companies are ingredient companies, meaning they're products or services are technologies, ingredients, or components in products sold to consumers. Regardless, if you've got customers and other stakeholders like shareholders and employees, your brand is important and you should manage it.

Myth #4: Personal branding is a big deal. Yes, personal branding exists, but it's sort of silly and trite. I'll tell you why. For big companies, branding is complex. For small businesses, it's straightforward. For a single individual, it's trivial. Be aware that everything you say and do and everything others say about you impacts your reputation. Try your best to manage it. That's pretty much it. That's not branding. It's common sense.

Myth #5: Branding is all about advertising. It never really was, since brand reputation is about the sum of all interaction with the company from all sorts of sources. But these days, old-school advertising has, to some extent, fragmented into product placement, SEO, interactive / online, etc. So branding is even less a strict function of advertising than it was before. 

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The Importance of Logo Design

The use of symbols in communications has been documented since the time of hieroglyphics. Symbols are used to convey depth of information in an efficient manner, and they can be used to replace what would normally require a lot of explanation. Symbols are a fantastic way to convey a concept . . . think of roadside signs, for example.

With a logo, you can use a symbol and/or font style to convey information about your business that can be easily remembered by prospects and existing customers. It empowers your business to communicate using both visual (symbol or a graphic style) and auditory (your business name) cues, which makes it more memorable. A logo is an important part of your company’s brand, which embodies how your customers both think and feel about you.

Some business owners think that a logo design is both unnecessary and out of their reach—that it’s something for only large corporations or fancy design companies. But the importance of a smart logo design for a small business can’t be underestimated. And it’s likewise for building a brand—whether you invest in your brand or not, you’re creating your brand at every moment. It’s up to you whether that brand conveys a positive or negative image or feeling in the minds of your customers.

Think about it—if branding wasn’t important, why would so many companies do it? If branding and logos weren’t important, we’d live in a world of generic products. Quite a few years ago, some people thought generic products would trump their branded, more expensive counterparts. The generic products were basically identical in quality, but came in plain, black-and-white packaging. Now years later, branded packaging takes up the majority of shelf space at retail stores. The reason for this is much more complex than the fact that people like to look at colorful packages.

Logos and brands are very important in establishing relationships with new customers. If a customer is searching for a lawn services company, for example, and he comes across two companies on Google—one that doesn’t have a professional logo design and one that does—which company do you think is more appealing?

The company with a logo has an advantage because a professional logo design conveys a feeling of trust… and trust is a big reason why customers initiate a relationship with your company. Most people are willing to pay more to have a relationship with a trusted company, as opposed to working with an unknown, generic entity.

Even if your company’s office is in your basement, or in a building that no one ever sees, if your business cards, website, and vehicles reflect a professional image, your business will appear more established and successful.

Fortunately, logo design is something you can easily do yourself these days—so that you don’t have to pay thousands of dollars to hire a designer. Online products like LogoYes™ allow you to create a professional logo design that you can use both online and offline. Because LogoYes includes a huge database of symbols (based on different industries) and fonts, it’s easy for you to choose a style and symbol that suit your company’s products or services.

Investing in a logo design for your small business can really pay off for your business over time—and these days, it’s both affordable and easy to do yourself. Upgrade your company’s image today and you will reap the benefits of building a positive brand for your business in the future.

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The myth of unlimited revisions

Sorry, but if if sounds too good to be true, it usually is

Ooooh – unlimited revisions. Clients and designers are always asking us about this one. Gotta admit – impressive stuff in a red starburst. And we certainly couldn’t offer unlimited revisions without sinking our company. And at a flat rate too. How is this frikkin’ possible? Answer – it ain’t. Speaking bluntly, ‘unlimited revisions’ on a logo design project is a goofy concept, impossible to maintain, and the use of these two words is designed to do one thing, and one thing only. Separate design buyers from their cash. Firstly, it shouldn’t take ‘unlimited’ revisions to arrive at a great logo. A designer worth their sand should be able to hone in on an effective logo within a few revision cycles. After all – the preliminary concepts were initially worked up with target market and business philosophies in mind (in the case of the online ‘unlimited revision’ dudes I wonder if they were).

Anything else is just Visual Spam – throw enough designs at the project in the hope something, anything, ‘FOR THE LOVE OF GAWD! PLEASE PICK ONE” will stick. The same was said about monkeys and Shakespeare (it’s not true by the way). And just like monkeys and The Bard, the ‘Unlimited Revisions’ promise is impossible to keep.

Here’s a fun test – order a logo from one of these online companies, and request, nay demand, that your work-in-progress logo to be previewed in one million color combinations (alright, let’s be more reasonable – ten thousand color combinations) within the three day turnaround schedule. Ten thousand is not even ‘unlimited’. Unlimited is, well, unlimited. And if the answer is anything other than “yes”, then the service is NOT really offering unlimited revisions.

There is a limit. We’re not sure where it is. But it is there

Simply put – when companies promise you ‘unlimited revisions’ on ANY design project they are lying. Flat. Out. Full. Throttle. Lying. Kinda shake your confidence in their entire design process, huh? Simply put, nobody can truly offer ‘unlimited revisions’ with any ‘flat rate’ design project (unless on billable hours and in that case, the more the merrier). Any single project risks bankrupting the studio. Great-grandchildren could still be working on this logo design project. It’s a variation of the real-world ‘lifetime guarantee’. Who’s lifetime? The customer? Or the company’s?

What it actually means

So what’s the skinny on all this unlimited revision stuff? Donning my detective cap, I went under cover – answering a freelance job posting from a leading logo design firm, (posted on the HOW Design Forum), to find out. After jumping through some hurdles (and actually getting the job!), I had an online chat exchange with the company owner to find out the real deal on their services:
Me: If I’m working on a design project, am I responsible for the entire project, or just the preliminary concepts?

Them: Our freelance designers are responsible for the entire project.

Me: That doesn’t make much sense. You’re paying me a flat rate for my design work, but your web site advertises ‘unlimited revision’s. How can I commit to unlimited revisions for flat rate?

Them: Don’t worry about that. If the client has not approved a design in 2 or 3 revision cycles, we cancel the project and refund their money (Ed – minus the service charge).

Me: Isn’t that a little dishonest?

Them: We have been around for a while, and that is how we do business. If you are not comfortable with that, maybe this job is not for you.

Me: You’re probably right.

So now we can understand ‘unlimited revisions’ and once we take a look ‘under the hood’ it all makes sense. If a client appears to be a ‘headache’, the solution is to end the project, and refund the fees paid. Except for one small detail – the ‘refund’ actually involves keeping a $75 ‘service fee’ (which, by the way, covers the fee paid to the designers in the first place). Not exactly a ‘money back guarantee’ as advertised on the front page. In fact, the sales pitch could actually be translated into “Hire us to create your logo. We’ll go through a few rounds of roughs, and if we haven’t come up with something that you like, we’ll refund a portion of your fee and keep a portion of it to cover our costs in the development of preliminary designs“. That’s not a bad pitch. Honest too. But of course, that doesn’t sell as well as “Unlimited Revisions. Money back guarantee if not satisfied” screaming at you in a star burst.

We will be charitable and call this marketing ‘hype’.

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Copyright Issues In Logo Design

Copyright is an issue that doesn’t come up very often in blog articles, especially in logo design so I thought I would bring this topic up to see if we could learn something from it, myself included.

I should mention that this article starts off a bit technical, but bear with it… clarifications come further in the article.

What Is Copyright?

AIGA, the professional association for design, defines copyright as:

    “The exclusive right to control reproduction and commercial exploitation of your creative work. Copyright protects any kind of artwork, including illustrations, photographs and graphic design. Except under certain circumstances (see “work made for hire” section), you own the copyright in your work at the moment you create it in a “fixed form of expression.” A fixed form of expression is any tangible medium that can be perceived by humans, including traditional forms—such as paintings, sculptures, writings—and new forms that require a machine to perceive (e.g., GIF files, CDs, websites).

    Source: AIGA Copyright Basics For Graphic Designers

I am not going to go into the basics of copyright here, as you can read about that in the link above but I would like to bring up some areas worthy of discussion…

Copyright Laws In Logo Design

Based on the definition given by AIGA above, you own the copyright of your own design once “you create it in a “fixed” form of expression” but the question is where can you draw this line?

For example, say I am going to design a logotype (ie. a logo that is made out of a typeface only)… this means I will have to use a typeface designed by another designer. Assuming I have paid for the license of that particular typeface, does this give me exclusive rights to change / alter the typeface and then resell it onto a client?

The closest answer I came across was found in this article titled Can We Use Fonts In Logo Design? by Mark Monlux, of the Graphic Artists Guild.

    It is true that the USA Copyright Office does not copyright typeface design. However, that does not mean that typeface does not have some restrictions. Specifically in the Copyright Ruling of 1988 it says regarding typefaces: “Useful articles are not protected except to the extent the articles contain artistic features capable of existing separately and independently of the overall utilitarian shape. Variations of typographic ornamentation [or] “mere lettering” are not copyrightable.”

Turning that legal jumble into English, it is to my understanding (correct me if I am wrong) that we CAN NOT edit a font and sell it to a client as “mere lettering” of the font. ie. Since our logo will be using characters out of a copyrighted typeface (scalable fonts are copyrightable) it is classified as “mere lettering” and it is “independent of the overall utilitarian shape” which means that it exists separately from the typeface itself, therefore making it illegal to sell on as a derivative of the typeface.

So what can we do? Monlux continues on in the article:

    “Ask first [the type foundry], get permission [to use the typeface]. Most type foundries have user agreements printed with the disks they supply or posted online at their websites. All user agreements are not alike. Read through them and see if permission is already granted. If the foundry does not hold all the licensing to the typeface then they should be able to provide you with the name of the artist who created it.”

So to clarify, to use any part of a scalable typeface in a logo design that we want to resell onto a client, we must first read the user agreement and / or check with foundry to confirm whether we may use the typeface in the logo design.

Monlux confirms this in his replies saying that:

    It’s typically permissible to use typefaces in brochures, books, magazines, and other enlightening, and informative works because the typeface is being used as typeface. But speciality uses (such as logo design) are going to require that you do a little homework. Be sure to read that user agreement which comes with your font.

Font Licensing / Design Patents / Trademarks

On this topic of font licensing one should also know that:

    “When a font is ‘purchased’ the user never really owns the font – they typically receive a license to use that font on only one computer. These End User License Agreements (EULAs) differ between companies but generally state quite clearly that the fonts may only be used on machines for which there is a valid license.”

Based on this fact, this means that you can not send clients any fonts unless the user agreement specifically allows it. Fonts must be purchased separately per user otherwise it is a violation of the end-user license agreement between the logo designer and the typeface designer.

This leaves me to one question that I could not find the answer to… Does this mean the client will have to pay for another license of the font to be able to use the logo design or do they only have to purchase another license if they want to use the whole typeface? I would presume the latter but I could be wrong.
You Can Still Legally Copy A Font

While researching I also came across something that really caught my eye… According to the SIL:

    “If a type designer wants to ‘copy’ a font in a manner legal in the USA, they would now be required to print out every glyph at large size on a printer, then scan the image and import it into the font design program. They could then manually or automatically trace the image. This seems to be perfectly legal under current understandings of US copyright law, but may not be morally acceptable.”

So in the end if worse comes to worst (and I mean worst), you could still technically ‘copy’ a font.

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