Depending on circumstance, purpose or business, many entrepreneurs and businessmen are divided about logo design: either its important or its a trivial thing at the early stage. Either way of thinking can lead us to re-evaluate if our company’s logo design is hurting our business.
Bad design is, well, bad. But there are your business leaders and there are your graphic designers. Not every people can be both. So there are bad judgments about how a logo design comes out, because, hey, the ultimate person to have the say on this is the one who ordered it.
Fortunately (or is it unfortunately?) you can be basic about this, and judge the most horrible mistakes that could ever happen to a logo design. These mistakes hurt your company a lot, so by checking to see if your logo fits the ugly bill, then you can decide whether to stick with it or get another one done.
Basic Question One: Does your company logo look too much like another logo?
Or you can rephrase this as “Do we come off as a knock-off?”. Blunt, yes, but it is a necessary brutality. Some logo designs borrow elements and colors from other corporate logo designs and this is done with full intention. This is because they are affiliated with a company or net service, for example eBay and the numerous businesses it has spawned in the country.
Some logo designs do really come off as a knock-off of another more popular logo design. This is generally frowned upon in the graphic design community since it shows tackiness, laziness of creative thought and giving false value that you did not create yourself. The client and customer knows better.
Having a distinct custom logo design design early on and it will save you from all these mistakes, along with potential headaches from possible copyright infringements and lawsuits.
Basic Question Two: Is it Readable?
Ah, is it or is it not? The question is not that if you can, the question is if you customers or clients can read it in any form, color, size and medium. Often, flowing and gaudy font styles are the death blow to logo designs, making them insignificant in small sizes and black and white versions. This is why there is a black and white test for custom logo design designs, to ensure that their impact and legibility remains after all discerning colors are stripped away.
Other people may take professional, straight style fonts like Helvetica or Arial for granted, saying that they are unimaginative and traditional. However their legibility factor is exceptional. But the bottom line is that there really is no concrete rule about what font style to use other than it should be readable. Different industries and businesses require different identities, from chic restaurants to formal institutions. New font styles are invented everyday, the important thing is that it works for the company, not against it.
Basic Question Three: Is it direct?
Are your misinterpreting? Lots of companies and logo designs die from the simple fact that the logo design suggests something else entirely to the customer. The business nature and the style of the logo design doesn’t jive so to speak. This is why most logo designs needs a slogan, a suggestive image or color element to directly say to people what the company really is about. Sometimes, the company name alone saves you from this situation, because it suggest what you do. Sometimes when the name is not enough, it may be time to reconsider a more direct logo design.
Asking yourself and your logo design these three basic questions will instantly tell you if your logo design has so much more to give and it if its not working at all. It can still be the best logo design for you. The ultimate telling step? Go to the experts. Give us a call and we will evaluate your logo and will tell you whats wrong with it and how we can make it better.
