Logo Design Book
Logo Design Book
Every designer has their own style, and along with that style,
every designer will have their own technique for creating graph-
ics. There’s no right way or wrong way to start designing a logo.
Some designers do a color study to ensure that the colors are just
right for a certain project, others start with the fonts or typefaces
when conceiving a new look. (More about color and fonts in the
following chapters.) A logo can start as an idea in one’s head, or
a hastily scratched doodle on a napkin, but one thing is for sure,
a designer will go through a number of processes of trial and
error to get to a final design that the rest of the world will see. For
every logo out in the world, there are millions upon millions that
never saw the light of day for any number of reasons.
Whether you are making your own logo or having a logo made
for you don’t be afraid to make adjustments until it works. Mak-
ing revisions and saving each version is a great way to visualize
the spectrum of a logo. Who knows, the final version of your
logo might be somewhere between the first concept and the twen-
tieth revision.
Having said that, one can get too overly critical and start to lose
sight of the bigger picture. A logo should be able to tell the story
of your product and be quickly recognizable, but keep in mind,
no logo can be all things to all people at once. Even if your final
logo is loved by 99% of people, there will always be someone,
somewhere that just doesn’t like it. You can’t please all the people
all the time.
• If there are obvious trends, do they all seem to run together and
fail to stand out from each other?
• It’s ok, even good, to buck trends to make your logo stand apart,
but you have to keep in mind what the general perception will be.
A florist probably shouldn’t have a logo that would look more at
home at a car dealership.
chapter
Colors and What They Mean
Colors can cause an emotional response in us humans, and we re-
act to them whether we are aware of it or not. We are hard-wired
to associate certain colors with distinct feelings. Colors are the
most basic method of non-verbal communication we have and
once you have an understanding of what each color represents
you can plan the colors you’ll use in your logo.
As you can see, many companies and brands have done extensive
research into which colors work best with their particular mes-
sages. Some of the best logos make good use of color to convey
a non-verbal message to their audience. There are no rules set
in stone when it comes to choosing colors for your own logo, but
this guide can help you to understand what others might perceive
when viewing your logo.
As you can see, the color wheel is a valuable tool for determining
good color combinations.
This is a basic color wheel showing
primary, secondary and tertiary
colors and you can get some great
color combinations from this wheel.
There are more complex color
wheels that offer more shades of
these basic colors.
chapter
Corporate Color Swap
To demonstrate how much color can play a part in our daily lives,
I've put together a visual experiment. Take a look at these well
known logos with their primary colors swapped with those of a
competitor. It's amazing how much the feel of each of these logos
changes with a simple color swap!
chapter
Fonts: A Simple Rule
The world of fonts can be a bit intimidating and confusing. A
quick Internet search for fonts will reveal no shortage of websites
offering free fonts, fonts for sale and font related software. Fonts
come in so many styles and formats that if you’ve never used a
font outside of the ones pre-installed on your computer it can
seem quite daunting.
OpenType
OpenType is the industry standard for fonts and used by all major
font foundries including Microsoft, LinoType and Adobe. Open-
Type fonts are scalable to very large sizes without compromising
clarity - they stay sharp at any size. All of the fonts found on
Summitsoft.com and Macwareinc.com are created in this exacting
format to ensure best results.
Finding Fonts
Finding fonts to use seems easy enough, you can peruse any num-
ber of websites that offer free fonts for download, however, most
of the time those fonts are for personal use only – meaning, they
are not to be used for any project that has commercial potential.
You can use these free fonts for family newsletters, scrapbooking,
flyers or any other project that basically is just for friends and
family, but once you make your self known the public, you’ll want
to make sure you are using fonts that are licensed for commercial
use. A font with a commercial use license allows you to use the
font for public purposes, such as in a logo or advertising. Gener-
ally speaking, commercial-use fonts cost money and can be found
online. Summitsoft has a large collection of fonts available at
www.summitsoft.com for Windows, and www.macwareinc.com
for Mac fonts. All of the fonts in Summitsoft’s library are licensed
for commercial-use and can be purchased easily.
Once you have your fonts picked out, you’ll need to install the
font on your system and depending on your computer you may
want to use a font management application. There are many font
managers out there, including Summitsoft’s own, which comes
with the font collections available on the website.
Now that you have your fonts installed and ready to use feel free
to experiment with different looks and different fonts. Try your
name in all caps or all lowercase, you never know what will look
good until you try it! Personally, I always start a new logo with
the font, once you have the font nailed down the rest of the design
can flow from that style.
I follow a simple rule that has served me well over the years when
it comes to fonts: Keep it Simple. That’s it. Don’t go overboard
and see how many different fonts you can jam into a single de-
sign. I like to use no more than two different fonts in any given
design. Within those two fonts, it’s okay to use styles such as bold
or italic if needed.
chapter
Time For A Change?
Some of you may already have a logo and are perhaps think-
ing about a change. How do you know when it’s time for a new
logo? That’s completely up to you, but the fact that you are even
thinking about it means that you should at least explore new
ideas. Many companies are constantly changing their logos to
keep up with the times and to stay current. In a previous chapter
we looked at how Pepsi has continually evolved their look while
Coke has remained fairly steady. While no one but you can de-
cide if it’s time for a new logo, here are few things to consider.
Many retailers have tried to soften their perception over the years.
Walmart changed their logo from the stark, all capital letters de-
sign that they had for decades to a more friendly, rounded letter
design with a passive blue and a friendly sun icon.
NFL football teams make changes all the time. Sometimes the
changes are subtle, like the
Minnesota Vikings making small tweaks to their logo, while oth-
ers are substantial, like the Denver Broncos.
As you can see, the changes made to the Viking’s logo are mini-
mal, but make the overall final image cleaner and more sleek. The
Broncos logo is a radical change – the horse is completely new
and the big letter “D” is gone. However, the team stayed with it’s
color scheme, if not a slightly modified version of it. Changing
from a bright orange and blue, to a darker shade of those colors.
A look at some well known companies and how their logos have changed over the years…
chapter
Choices, Choices, Choices
It's safe to assume that if you are reading this book you are con-
sidering a new logo. By now you've undoubetly discovered that
there are plenty of options when it comes to obtaining a logo and
each has it's pros and cons. Let's take a quick look at each of these
options to help determine which is best for you.
There are plenty of websites out there that allow you to have de-
signers bid on making a logo for you. You may get lucky and find
a good designer at a low price, but most of the time you'll end up
wasting time and money trying to find the right fit for your logo
project.
There is a world of online DIY logo makers out there and a world
of difference between them. A good portion of them are the
same thing with the same content and are very limited in what
you can make. Others basically ask for your business name and
a few other questions before "randomizing" a custom logo which
is nothing like you had in mind. Pricing can range from free to
$100's depending on the site, but in the end you get what you pay
for and sometimes even that is too much.
This is where Logo Design Studio Pro Online comes in. Techni-
cally it is an online Do It Yourself logo designer, but it was built
with over 18 years of experience in logo software knowledge.
Summitsoft has been the leader in Windows and Mac logo design
software for nearly 2 decades and have brought that experience
to Logo Design Studio Pro Online - the easy to use online logo
creator.
In the end, your logo should reflect what your business, product,
brand, group, organization, or whatever represents in a pleasing
and easy to understand way. Use the ideas that you’ve learned
about colors and fonts along with your own style and you should
end up with a logo that you can be excited about for years (or
decades) to come.
If you are ready to create your first logo, or update your existing
logo you can use expensive software like Photoshop, Illustrator
and the like or you can try Logo Design Studio Pro Online. Easy
to use, drag and drop, web-based logo creation that allows you
create professional looking logos from scratch or modify any of
the included templates that are available in many different styles.
Summitsoft.com