With the power of the Web, and more eyes watching than ever, it's important for a business to communicate its unique message clearly. The easiest way to recognize a company and distinguish it from others is by its logo. Take a look at our top 10 common mistakes made in logo design below:
1. Avoid cheap logo design
A professional business should look professional. New business owners often invest a lot of time and money in property and equipment, but do not often match it by investing suitably in their logo.
2. Don't be too trend reliant
Trends come and go and can often turn into cliches. A well-designed logo should be timeless and this can be achieved by ignoring the latest design tricks and gimmicks. The biggest cliche in logo design is the dreaded 'corporate swoosh' which is the ultimate way to play it safe. To create a unique identity it is best to completely ignore logo trends.
3. Use Vector Software
A vector graphic is made up of mathematically precise points which ensures visual consistency across multiple sizes. The alternative of course is to use raster graphics software such as Adobe Photoshop - a raster graphic or bitmap as it's commonly called consists of pixels and can cause problems with reproduction of your logo and if you zoom in on a raster graphic it will appear pixelated making it unusable.
The main advantages of vector graphics for logo design are:
- The logo can be scaled top any size without losing quality
- Editing the logo later on is much easier
- It can be adpated to other media more easily than a raster image
4. Avoid using stock art
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 copywright. Downloading stock vector imagery from websites such as VectorStock is not a crime but could possibly get you in trouble if you incorporate it in a logo.
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. You can pretty easily spot vectors in logos because they are usually familiar shapes such as globes and silhouettes.
6. Avoid Overly Complex Designs
When printed in small sizes, a complex design will lose detail and in some cases will look like a smudge or worse, a mistake. 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 keep things simple. Look at the corporate identities of Nike, Mcdonald's and Apple. Each company has a very simple icon that can easily be reproduced at any size.
7. Don't rely on colour for effect
This is a very common mistake. Some designers cannot wait to add colour to a design and some reply on it completely. Choosing colour should be your last decision, so starting your work in black and white is best.
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. If you use colour to help distinguish certain elements in the design, then the logo will look completely different in one tone.
8. Avoid choosing a poor font style
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 a 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. Some designers simply throw in type as an afterthought.
9. Don't use too many 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 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. Don't copy others
This is the biggest logo design mistake of all and unfortunately is becoming more and more common. As mentioned, 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 favors, neither the client nor the designer.
Get in touch with Tandem's creative design team to discuss your next new logo project to ensure that you are standing out from the competition and attracting potential new business. 01778 426661
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