Portfolio of Logo Designs
Click on any small image below to view larger size logo design.
Logo Design
The actual design of a logo is dictated by your marketing plan. Generally speaking,
simplicity will serve you better than complexity. But to arrive at simplicity the design process will go through multiple complex ornate designs that are then whittled down to a clean simple design. Very rarely does a designer come directly to a simple design.
So, sometimes it’s hard for the layman to see the value in the final finished simple design.
Believe me the time, agony and frustration will definitely have happened.
The design of a logo like most advertising material needs to have a visual impact and reflect the positioning, nature and style of your business. A logo device doesn’t have to represent a business’ activity for example a restaurant’s logo doesn’t have to be food.
The Ferrari logo isn’t a car, nor is the Qantas logo an aircraft. A logo design should reflect your business, but it doesn’t have to be literally, often it is far better to display the spirit or attitude of your company. Or at least how you would like to be perceived by your clients. Of course, it must be appropriate Fun designs are not for solicitors just as the corporate look is not for the local kindergarten. Remember, many companies are very
successful without a logo device, just using a logotype, for example, Microsoft. or Time
Magazine.
But the uses that it will be put to are crucial; what can be achieved on the internet
is completely different to what can be achieved in screen printing on a garment or
reproduced in a newspaper in black and white. The logo design has to be available
in various digital formats, Adobe Acrobat being one of the most important, and most
printers will want a vectorised version.
All the different versions of the logo/logos design should be made available on disk
or via e-mail, complete with colour specifications appropriate to the intended user: a
commercial offset printer needs PMS colours (Pantone Matching System™), the painter
needs commonly available paint chart colours (not British Standards they haven’t heard of
in Bringabitchalong), the signwriter needs vinyl colours, the web designer needs web-safe
colours.
A complexity best handled by a formal Corporate Identification Manual. Ad image has
developed several of these over the years, complete with stationery, signage and general
logo usage specifications including fonts.
Colour
Beware that every media you use will reproduce your colours differently. Pantone PMS
colour specifications are great for spot colours in the printing world, but can’t always be matched in CMYK the main gamut of commercial offset printing. Also, digital printing may also produce another variation, some digital printers use RGB rather than CMYK. Screen printing inks while made up to PMS specifications are often more intense in colour than offset printing. If your signwriter wants to use signwriting vinyl or paint there will be another mismatch. Plus on Television and the internet, your colours will be different on every screen.
Relax
At the end of the day, perfect colour matches are not that important, try to match but be
prepared to settle for the spirit of your colour scheme.
Have Multiple Versions. Have wide and narrow versions of your logo created, for both portrait and landscape use. Have full colour, animated, simple colour and black & white versions created. Have
the simple colour and Black & white versions simplified for reproduction by the coarser
methods, such as newspapers and some screen printing.
Update
Your logo will need updating every five years or so, nothing too radical but a tweaking to
keep it up-to-date.