Essential Logo Design Tips
When designing, ask yourself, “Is this balanced? Do I need this? Is this necessary? It’s all about balance. If your visual talent, meaning; your eyes disagree, for even an instance, scratch the idea. A logo must make sense immediately.
Designing a logo is both an art and a science. However, in order to be a good designer you must master, certain elements, described further below. Unfortunately, nowadays anyone can whip up Photoshop, type some text, add an effect or two and claim to have designed a logo. It’s deeper than that. Many skills need to be mastered first, before even attempting. The master rule here is, don’t use Photoshop. Notice the name? “Photo” that means this program is for “Photo.” Instead, we prefer Illustrator, or any vector based program.
This article is not a tutorial, but is a guide to help you overcome the troubles in designing a logo. Here are a few good TorinoTips you can follow.
The key is balance. Size, weight, and kerning are the required steps, and on occasion color to be in balance. When in full design mode, it is important to follow these four steps, and in that order. Always design your logos in grayscale, using gray for a secondary colors that can always be replaced later. As logos must always have a black and white version regardless.
You must also be quick to realize type hazards, most important kerning. Always manually adjust kerning.
Guides are your friend, use them and use master them. With illustrator you have the best access to locking and unlocking of guides, making guides different sizes and shapes. These guides help when spacing out margins for words, letters or shapes. It is important to understand the concept of guides. When we say guides, the rulers and grid fall along the same lines.
One of the most important rules, or should we say “The Golden Rule,” and that is choosing the right font. Remember the more generic you go, the more appealing and important. Do your research, check out all the biggest companies worldwide, most of their logos are generic fonts, but uniquely arranged.
You can always portray different “moods” with different serif or san-serif styles. Stay close to most known font families, Helvetica, Arial, Times, etc. This also helps when in HTML based web design, your body copy must be in a font that is freely available on most machines.
When working with editable text, make your balance adjustments, then outline your fonts. This always gives you the freedom to manipulate your letters, or shall we say shapes now, into anything you can imagine.
To be flat, or not to be flat. Thank is the question. The answer, you can be both depending on the circumstances. Before even attempting a logo that has additional elements like reflections, glows, shadows, etc. you must first experiment with balance; size, weight, kerning and color. Remember flat logos save you money down the road, the less colors the more printer friendly.
Yes, we know un-flat logos are cool, but its an additional step that may not have to be performed necessarily. Your visual talent should tell you otherwise. The less you distract the eye, the more you persuade the mind. That’s it. We have just scratched the surface of elegant design, but the key concepts must always be applied and are the foundation of any successful design. Simplicity and balance.
For more design tips and tutorials visit our blog @ Graphic Design Blog.
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