- Hey folks and welcome to
another video from myself.
Today we're going to be looking at
common mistakes in logo design.
Now, if I was to ask 10 logo designers
what their five biggest
bugbears were with logo design,
I'm pretty sure we'd all come out with
quite a few similar ones.
Today I want to talk about
the five which I feel
affect logo design the most,
and can basically make
for a very poor logo.
Here's my number one.
Suitability.
Now, how often do I see
logos that have been designed
because it's what the
business owner likes?
I could probably have lost count
on how many times I've seen that.
Now, yes, it's your business,
and you want to like
the logo that you have,
which is selling your
services or your products,
but, the logo's not for you.
The logo is to attract new customers.
So, your logo should be
designed for them, shouldn't it?
Shouldn't be designed for you.
So, what you need to do
is you need to study who
it is you're targeting.
You need to find out where they hang out,
what colours do they
like, where do they...
how do they spend their social time?
By building up a picture
of your perfect customer
then what you can do is you
can build a brand identity
that specifically targets them.
Yes, we want to sell our services
to as many people as possible, but,
by having a target and
being very specific,
you'll have more success
with that type of person
and you will get residual
sales from other people
who maybe the logo isn't
specifically targeted at,
but by building an audience,
then you will start to creep
your brand out sideways,
out with that audience.
But, by creating a logo which
is designed just for you,
then it's precisely
that, it's just for you,
it's not going to help you attract
and build a customer base.
So, if you're a designer
designing a logo for a customer,
or you are hiring a logo designer,
make sure that the logo is designed
for the audience that it's aimed at,
and not for the business owner.
Problem number two.
Designing your logo as a bitmap.
If you design your logo
as a bitmap graphic,
it's going to look great at
the size it was designed at
but if you need to make your logo bigger,
say for some signage or for
going on the side of a vehicle,
you're going to run into
problems, because bitmaps,
the bigger you make them,
the lower the quality.
They start to get all
pixelated and blurred.
You can go smaller, that'd be fine.
But, if you want to go bigger,
not going to work, I'm afraid.
So, what you need to make sure
is that when you have your logo designed,
that it's a vector
graphic, so, an eps file,
designed in Adobe
Illustrator or Corel Draw,
something like that, because
with a vector graphic
you can resize it to any size you want,
size of the moon, and it
would not lose any quality,
very, very small, size of a stamp,
still going to remain pin sharp,
and you only need that one file.
That one file can be sized and saved
for whatever you want.
With a bitmap graphic, if
you want different sizes
you're going to have to create that file
at different sizes, so it's
a lot more work as well.
So, make sure when you're
having your logo designed
that you specify you'd
like it to be designed
in a vector file format.
Problem number three.
Making your logo design far too complex.
Again, a bit like bitmap graphics,
you get your logo designed
and it looks great,
you've got everything you want on there.
But, if you want to make
your logo quite small,
how do think that complex
logo's going to look?
It's going to be really
difficult to make out
all of that detail at very small sizes.
So, ideally your logo should be simple.
Look at all the big brands.
Look at Nike.
Look at Apple.
They're just so simple.
So, you need to think that way too,
when you're having your logo created.
Try not to overcomplicate things.
Try to boil down your brand
identity to its simplest form,
and then you could always get in
the more complex messaging
through your marketing.
You don't have to get
everything into the logo.
It doesn't have to say
exactly what you do,
all in one place.
Get something which is
going to be recognisable,
works well on a page or on a screen,
and you can build around it.
Number four.
Using stock images and
clipart in your logo.
Now, this isn't something that a
professional logo designer would do,
well, at least I'd hope not.
But, you will find that if you go to
the competition type
websites for logo design,
or cheaper ones like
Fiverr, you run the risk
of the designer, and I say that loosely,
using stock clipart or stock
images for your logo design.
They'll pull them off,
they'll add some text,
and they will pass it on to you,
and you're none the wiser.
You're happy, you love it,
you think it looks great,
and you go and start using it.
The problem is stock images
have very tight guidelines
and one of those guidelines is that you
cannot use stock photography
as part of a logo
to trade off of.
So, please double check that when you're
having your logo designed,
that the designer is creating
your logo from scratch.
Now, even from scratch
you want to make sure
that they're not copying
someone else's artwork,
or a piece of stock, 'cause
that's just as illegal,
it's going against copyright,
if they have that trademarked
you're in serious trouble and you could
end up being fined for
an awful lot of money.
So, make sure when your
logo is being designed,
that it is completely, 100% original.
Number five, DIY logos.
If your tooth hurts you go to the dentist.
If you have the need for
surgery, you go to hospital
and you have surgery done by a surgeon.
If you need something designed,
use a professional designer.
It's what we're trained for.
You may think you've got, you know,
you have Microsoft Word and
you can knock together a design
and that will do.
Really, you don't value your
brand at all by doing that.
Yes, it may be quick, yes,
it will certainly be cheaper,
but, you're just shooting
yourself in the foot.
You should really be taking
the advice and services
of a professional designer,
who will make sure
that what you end up with
is exactly what you need.
Now, there's a difference
between wants and needs,
but they will make sure
they give you what you need
for your brand.
Please don't be tempted
to tinker away yourself
if it's not your professional career.
I'd say the same as well by
using places like Fiverr,
and competition websites.
Those tend to be populated
by amateur designers
and you will run into some of the problems
which I've already
mentioned in this video,
because they're not
entirely up to the grade
of creating a professional logo design.
So, please just think
carefully before you jump in
and try and create your own logo
or go down the cheaper route
of something like Fiverr.
Reach out, contact a
professional designer,
they'll be more than happy
to have a chat with you,
find out what it is you're looking for,
and you know, give you a quote
and let you know what the benefits are
of using them as opposed to someone
who doesn't quite know what they're doing.
So that's my top five common mistakes
in logo and brand identity design.
There are a lot of others,
and I'm sure I'll touch
on those in future videos
as we go through and really explore
the world of logo and brand design.
But, if you steer clear
of those five issues
that I've mentioned today,
you're off to a really good start,
and your brand identity
is going to look spot on.
I hope you found the video useful today,
if you have make sure you give it a like,
subscribe to my channel
if you haven't already
and I'd love if you could share it
with your friends on social.
It really helps me to build that audience
that I'm trying to achieve.
Until I see you next time,
stay creative, folks.
