Logo Design 101 - Need A Logo? Read This First!

 

Logo Design 101 - More to it than you think!

I love designing logos! Logo design is my favorite kind of job I get from clients. From gathering their ideas to laying it all out and putting the pieces together, I love creating one of the most important parts of a business's identity! What a lot of people don't realize is the importance of logo creation in terms of usability and ownership rights. Those are the two things I'd like to discuss today.

First, I want to tell you about the design aspect of logo creation. In graphic design, there are both Raster and Vector images. You may have heard of Adobe. This company has both Raster (Photoshop) and Vector (Illustrator) design programs. In short, logos need and should be designed in a Vector-format program like Illustrator or Corel (I use CorelDraw *gasp*). The reason for this is something called Resolution. This is a key word in graphic design. Resolution=Quality. When you start a new project in a raster-based program, it is always assigned a resolution. This will be the maximum quality your project will have in its lifetime; it can never get "added" quality. Resolution is related to pixels. We won't go into all of that, but the main reason you don't want your logo to have a resolution is because you are severely limited on the ways you can use your logo. You have assigned a quality to your logo, and you can never increase it, or the original size of your logo without losing clarity and having your logo look blurry.
For this reason, Vector-based design formats are the way to go for logo design! You will not have an assigned resolution or quality and you can size/scale your logo as small or as large as you want without losing any clarity whatsoever! I spend A LOT of time converting logos from Raster to Vector, so that my clients can use their logos for things like t-shirt printing, signage, etc. Most companies that you may outsource your logo will ask for that Vector formatted image. 

So, don't get stuck with a Photoshop logo. Chances are you are going to have to pay someone to redesign it in Vector format. It's SO important to have this file of your logo from your designer....and that leads me to my second topic....RIGHTS to your logo and files.

Yep, we're about to get a little legal here. Two of the most important things to ask your logo designer is, "Am I getting the VECTOR-based file format of my logo?" and "Do I retain all rights to my logo?" I know it sounds crazy, but many designers and design firms feel that if they do the design, it belongs to them. They will give you the files they want to give you, but they hold the ownership of the design, and therefore, YOUR company's logo! NO BUENO! 

Make sure you find out exactly what you are paying for. You don't want to be running back to your designer for permissions or worse, fighting for additional files from them and being charged extra. I am NOT a fan of this practice but have seen it done. The main reason they do this is to keep the original logo files within their company, so you cannot use your logo anywhere else or take it to another designer should you ever choose to do so. And to make more money. 

So, if you or someone you know is looking for a designer, I hope these tips will help.

Happy Designing!
~ Olivia