As a business owner, you’re constantly under the watchful eye when it comes to your brand. With the proliferation of the Web, it has never been more important for a business to communicate its unique message clearly. One of the easiest ways to recognize a company and distinguish it from others is by its logo. We have all witnessed our fair share of poorly designed logos. Below, we go through 10 common logo design mistakes that you should avoid if you want to create a successful and professional logo:
1. Designed By An Amateur
The business owner wanted to save money by designing the logo quickly themselves. Or a friend or relative who claims to know a little about graphic design does it as a favour. Or the wrong people are commissioned. Example: Your local printers are not likely to be proficient in logo design. Talk to an expert.
If your logo looks amateurish, then so will your business. A business should know where to look when it wants a new logo. When hiring an established and professional logo designer your logo will be unique and memorable. You won’t run into any problems down the line with reproducing it. Your logo will have a longer lifespan and won’t need to be redesigned in a couple of years. And most importantly, your logo will look professional.
2. Relies On Trends
Trends come and go and ultimately turn into clichés. A well-designed logo should be timeless, and this can be achieved by ignoring the latest design tricks and gimmicks. Focusing on current logo trends is like putting a sell-by date on a logo. Understanding what they trends are and using it to create or develop a logo that blends longevity and the company’s values is key.
3. Uses Raster Images
Using raster images for logos is not advisable because it can cause problems with reproduction. Maintaining visual consistency by making sure the logo looks the same in all sizes is essential. The main advantages of vector graphics for logo design are:
* The logo can be scaled to any size without losing quality.
* Editing the logo later on is much easier.
* It can be adapted to other media more easily than a raster image.
4. Contains Stock Art
This is simply taking the easy way out. This mistake is often made by business owners who design their own logo or by amateur designers who are not clued in to the laws on copyright. A logo should be unique and original, and the licensing agreement should be exclusive to the client: using stock art breaks both of these rules. Chances are, if you are using a stock vector image, it is also being used by someone somewhere else in the world, so yours is no longer unique.
5. Designing For Yourself Rather Than The Client
You can often spot this logo design sin a mile away; the cause is usually a designer’s enormous ego. If you have found a cool new font that you can’t wait to use in a design, well… don’t. Ask yourself if that font is truly appropriate for the business you’re designing for? For example, a great modern typographic font that you just love is not likely suited to a serious business such as a lawyer’s office. Some designers also make the mistake of including a “trademark” in their work. While you should be proud of your work, imposing your personality onto a logo is wrong. Stay focused on the client’s requirements by sticking to the brief.
6. Overly Complex
Highly detailed designs don’t scale well when printed or viewed in smaller sizes. The more detail a logo has, the more information the viewer has to process. A logo should be memorable, and one of the best ways to make it memorable is to use the KISS principle – Keep It Simple Stupid.
7. Relies On Colour For Its Effect
Without colour, a great design may lose its identity. Try to match the colours to your target audience. Every business owner will need to display their logo in only one colour at one time or another, so the designer should test to see whether this would affect the logo’s identity. People design logos without taking into consideration their future use. Be sure to deign your logos with the intent that they can be used on the internet, in print, on a street sign, embroidered on a backpack, and screen printed on a t-shirt. Make your logo as powerful in both colour and black & white.
8. Poor Choice Of Font
When it comes to executing a logo, choosing the right font is the most important decision a designer can make. More often than not, a logo fails because of poor font choice. Finding the perfect font for your design is all about matching the font to the style of the icon. But this can be tricky. If the match is too close, the icon and font will compete with each other for attention; if the complete opposite, then the viewer won’t know where to focus. The key is finding the right balance, somewhere in the middle.
Every typeface has a personality. If the font you have chosen does not reflect the icon’s characteristics, then the whole message of the brand will misfire. Bad fonts are often chosen simply because the decision isn’t taken seriously enough.
9. Has Too Many Fonts
A logo works best with a maximum of two fonts. Using too many fonts is like trying to show someone a whole photo album at once. Each typeface is different, and the viewer needs time to recognize it. Seeing too many fonts at once causes confusion. Using a maximum of two fonts of different weights is standard practice. Restricting the number of fonts to this number greatly improves the legibility of a logo design and improves brand recognition.
10. Copies Others
This is the biggest logo design mistake of all and, unfortunately, is becoming more and more common. The purpose of a logo is to represent a business. If it looks the same as someone else’s, it has failed in that regard. Copying others does no one any favours, neither the client nor the designer.
SPINN Media’s Graphic Design Services offer Logo and Corporate Stationery Design & Development. Contact us to discover how our Graphic Design services can benefit your new brand development project.