The logo is one of the most important elements of your marketing plan when in the process of setting up your business. Some businesses do not have a logo but find as they become more established that it was a mistake not having one sorted from the outset. However, the worst mistakes can be made by trying to make shortcuts when a logo is being decided upon. This is usually because of skimping on money but in the long run it causes more money to have to be spent.
I have included below a list of how not to design a logo in this article to avoid some of the most common pitfalls:
1. Some people will opt for setting up a logo contest. This will entail going on a website where work can be outsourced. The remit will be provided and a people can bid to do the work. Usually, the cheapest bidders will be accepted and the work will be done.
The pitfalls for this method is that you will not see what has been produced until the work appears in your mail box. With only a few lines to get to understand the remit it is highly likely that the logo will not be representative of the company it has been designed for and it will most likely be of poor quality because it has been rushed through with little consideration for appropriate design.
2. Another logo no no is accepting a design without feeding back to the graphic designer. The logo remit can often be misunderstood by the designer and you can end up with something totally different from what you had intended. Communication is key at this stage.
3. Attempts to do it yourself or a friend who has some knowledge of graphic design but is not a professional. The benefits of this is that you would save some money initially, though in the long run you would end up having to get it done again and the logo would appear to be too amateur. It is unlikely that you would have obtained a unique, memorable logo which can be used for a long period of time.
4. If you type into Google ‘logo design’ you will inevitably get people who have advertised online as being able to produce logos very cheaply or extremely quickly. If they have done their work properly neither of these is likely. No real thought will have been put into the remit as they will be churning out the product as quickly as possible before moving onto the next assignment. A true professional will have a regular process that is undergone in order to produce a quality product which cannot be done very quickly.
5. Software issues will be another difficulty as logos done in pixels cannot adjust to different sizing, giving a raster appearance (jagged edges); logo production will be done by vector art (which makes the image infinitely re-sizable)
6. Stock images should be avoided as the risk of other people having used the same logo as you are multiplied many times over. This cannot make your company unique, and therefore it cannot be highly defined in the minds of the public.
7. Lastly it is important to be aware of trends – these are constantly changing and you need to ensure that the logo you have chosen is either going to be adaptable to changing trends which would be necessary in fashion for example. Here they may use a basic signature as the logo and this will make the logo timeless. Examples of where the logo has fallen foul of this would be the 2012 Olympic Games logo. The logo is very contemporary but has been criticized by many as not being appropriate.
These are a few of logo designing dont’s which will help to prevent too many mistakes being made at the beginning.
