5 Musts for Logo Design

Small business owners are typically at the mercy of the designer when it comes time to have their logos designed to support their brand identities.  It’s important to sit down with your designer and make sure he or she understands what your brand promise is and where you want your brand to go.  It’s also important to educate your designer about your customers, market and competition, so he or she can design the most compelling logo.

Last year, I wrote a post called Top 5 Logo Design Do’s, but there are also a few technicalities you shouldn’t overlook during the design process.  Let’s look at the top 5 musts for logo design:

1. Logo versions: Make sure your designer provides your logo to you in high-resolution and low-resolution formats for use in print and online, and make sure your designer provides your logo in 4-color, 2-color and 1-color versions.  This is particularly important if you aren’t familiar with design software and can’t make these changes yourself for future projects.  It will save you time and money to ask for these versions up-front during the initial design process.
2. Logo size: You’ll use your logo on many different types of materials from small business cards to large banners, vehicle graphics or billboards.  Make sure your designer selects a design that will reproduce well at any size.  This doesn’t refer to resolution as discussed in #1 above, it refers to the elements of the design itself.
3. Logo halftones: I prefer logos that don’t use halftones for small businesses, because halftones can cause issues with some less expensive printing methods that small business owners might choose to use.  For example, the hot-stamping process used to produce graphics on some promotional items will not reproduce well for logos with halftones. 
4. Logo colors: Select standard PMS colors for your logo design that have decent CMYK equivalents.  That means, you can print in 4 colors without having to use extra PMS colors to produce your logo.  This will save you money over time.  In other words, make sure your full-color logo can be reproduced in 4 colors or less.  You can follow the link to read more about color branding.
5. Bundling services: During the initial logo design stage, you might want to have your designer create your business letterhead, envelopes, invoices, etc. at the same time.  It’s possible you can negotiate a discount on the bundled design project.

Can you think of any other musts during the logo design process?  What did you forget to do that you wish you had done during the design phase?

Photo: Flickr