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Logo Design Workshop |
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For Web designers, the time always comes when you are asked to design a
logo. Now, you might well be a seasoned graphic designer with years of logo
designs under your belt or, you might think that it is just a matter of
finding a typeface and tapping the words out on a keyboard and applying a
Photoshop filter. Either way, you can improve your logos if you follow a few
tried and trusted guidelines.
If
you study some of the best known logos around, you will notice that they
have some aspects in common - well, maybe not. After all, the most important
thing about any logo is that it is totally different from all others.
Okay, we have a paradox here! What all good logos have in common is that
they go out of their way to be different!
Some logos are so strong
that they
remain identifiable
even when
incomplete
Take a look at the logos of
Coca Cola, Mobil Oil, IBM, Kellogg's. They are all uniquely different. They
are instantly recognisable across the world and if you were to take any one
of them and cut it up into pieces, even the individual pieces would still be
identifiable.
To make a logo so powerful
takes two things, time and money. All these logos have been around for quite
some time and have had millions spent on promoting them in advertising and
packaging. When you design a new logo, you certainly won't have the benefit
of time - not to begin with anyway - and you will be very fortunate indeed
if it eventually gets the megabucks behind it to make it an icon of our
times.
One thing is for sure, if you don't
get the basic principles right, it doesn't matter how much you spend, a bad
logo won't get a chance to stand up to the test of time, it will be replaced
pretty quickly.
Some logos have been
around for years with little or no changes. They look every bit as relevant
today as they did when they were introduced umpteen years ago. The Coca Cola
logo, for instance, has been tinkered with by designers over the years but
the changes have been evolutionary not revolutionary. It's not what you
would call a modern logo, how could it be? It was originally designed
'in-house' back in 1886 and despite the many changes and translations that
have been made over the years, it is still essentially the same logo - in
fact, the most recognisable logo in the World.
There are two lessons to be learned here. Firstly, overtly 'trendy' logos
date quickly and can become embarrassments. If you can put a date to a logo,
there is probably something wrong with it - unless, of course, 'being of
today' is an essential part of the brief. Almost any well known logo that
you can think of is just as relevant today as it was years ago - timeless,
in fact!
Secondly, there's consistency.
Unlike the Coca Cola logo, the Pepsi Cola logo has changed significantly
over the years. It was originally very similar to the Coca Cola one, written
in a flowery script style. Today, it is arguably more modern, with its bold
sans serif typeface, but loses out on the classic, timeless aspect that
helps perpetuate Coke's heritage. To gain universal recognition, any company
or brand image depends on the amount of exposure it gets. If it is changed
every few years because it is starting to look old fashioned or through some
chairman's whim, then it has to be relearned by the public and it's back to
square one.
If you are designing a
logo for a company or product that already has an established logo, think
twice before suggesting any radical change. Look first at an evolutionary
change that it makes it more relevant to today - that doesn't mean
'modernise' it. Some years ago, the fashion was to 'modernise' logos with a
starker 'Swiss' look. Many of the 'big name' logo designs that I have been
involved with were for traditional English brands like Bovril, Horlicks,
Colman's Mustard, Rowntrees, Trebor and Frank Cooper's Marmalades. In each
of these cases, I found that I had to take two steps backwards to go forward
because they had all previously had their logos 'modernised' and had lost
much of their hard-earned traditional values in the process.
Most company trade marks
have some
little visual
trick that turns a type
face
into a distinctive logotype. Of
course, you could be designing a logo for a new, hi-tech company and you don
't want any hint of fuddy duddy tradition. Or, 'fashionable' might be an
essential part of the image you are trying to portray. Fine!
Let's look at the logos of some successful hi-tech companies and see what we
can learn from those. Take Microsoft, IBM, Canon, Sony, Apple. They are all
fairly simple, with the exception of Apple's 'apple' symbol, all are just
the name of the company written in a distinctive way.
'Distinctive' is the important factor here. These are not ordinary typefaces
bought from Adobe or downloaded from a free font site on the Web. They have
all been specially designed and hand-drawn so that they are NOT the same as
any other typeface.
Microsoft has a fairly
ordinary bold italic sans typeface, but the 'o' has a nick out of it making
it more distinctive, recognisable and memorable. IBM has 'scan lines'
running through a bold 'Egyptian' style font. Canon has a particularly
distinctive initial 'C'. Sony has what is probably the least distinctive
type style of all these examples, an extended slab-serif, but the word
itself is so unique it can get off with it. The choice of company and
product titles is another very important factor, but I won't go into that at
the minute.
The Apple logo is the only one
which has seen a recent change, albeit an evolutionary one where the rainbow
stripes have been replaced by a single colour. The word Apple is written in
an ordinary typeface, a derivative of Garamond, designed way back in the
sixteenth century!
None of these logos are
what you might call 'fashionable'. Apple's rainbow stripes were, but have
given way to a more classical approach. In doing so, the logo has lost some
of its distinctiveness but it was clearly dating the company's image and
that is undesirable for a company wanting to appear to be innovative.
Trendy, graphically fashionable logos are okay for companies or products
that are ephemeral. Graphic styles, like clothes, go in and out of fashion
all the time. Obviously, it wouldn't make much sense to design a logo for a
computer company using an Art Deco typestyle because it gives all the wrong
signals. On the other hand, flying in the face of convention is more likely
to provide a unique, creative answer than by repeating the same popular
images as everyone else.
This is where
design gets really interesting.
Clip art is often of very low quality
but regardless of the quality,
even if you
find some clip art that
you really like,
it's a sure
bet that somebody else is
already
using it for a similar job! There
are certain 'visual vocabularies' - clichés, if you like - associated with
every discipline you can think of. Look through Yellow Pages or a clip art
CD and you will see thousands of them - stars, stripes, chefs' hats, wooden
spoons, chickens. In logo design, clichés are counter productive. Instead of
making your logo look unique, they are confusing it with every other one
that uses the same visual idea. In fact, using such a device makes the
company look run-of-the-mill and cheap. But, take a cliché and give it a
twist, use it out of context or in a different way, and you will have given
your logo something that people will remember.
There is very little value in copying somebody else's logo - unless you
deliberately want to look like a me-too. A logo should ideally be as
different from every other one as you can possibly make it. It should also
communicate something about the company or product other than just its name.
You have an opportunity to add some additional values subliminally through
your choice of typeface and colour.
Most
corporate logos need to work across a wide spectrum of usage situations -
signage, stationery, packaging, promotional items and mainstream
advertising. They probably require different sizes and versions for
different applications too - a full colour version on the front of the
company's annual report or notepaper and a gold-leaf or etched glass version
that works on the main entrance door.
If
it appears on television, the logo could be animated, and there is always
the give-away, printed balloons!
Designing a logo today means that it will probably be used on the
Web. In fact, the Web could well be its main expression and print of little
or no consideration. A logo designed for Web use has to take into account
that it will be displayed at a small size, in relatively low resolution and
possibly with a restricted colour palette. If designing a logo specifically
or primarily for the Web, you should start with Web safe colours, not
Pantone or ink colours. It is easier to match printing ink to Web safe
colours than the other way around. |
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