Good Logo Instructions Make for a Good Logo

Helpful Articles

4-25-2012

Lets face it, everyone has a different life experience, and that transfers over to our vocabulary.  Words like elegant, sharp, clean, flowing, friendly and a ton others are very ambiguous and two different people will have a different image and association for each word. For example here are two logos that come up when you search for the word “friendly”
friendly logo design 1 friendly logo design 2
Both these logo designs are friendly.  One is friendly because of the colours and its simplicity, while the second design is friendly because of the character (happy pup) used.  How then do you communicate to the designer what you want to see in your friendly, or edgy, or sexy logo?

Here are a few things to follow that make for good logo instructions:

  1. Use simple instructions – don’t write paragraphs about what you want to see.  Instead try to communicate your direction in one clean concept in as few words as you can.  As a rule, 3 sentences is all it takes to communicate exactly what you want.
  2. When you say what you want, say what you don’t want as well– Using the above two logo designs as example, after you say you want a “friendly logo” communicate also that you don’t want to see a character, and instead want to see something simple.  If you want an elegant look, you can say that you want a few colours and don’t want to see shades and gradients.  This will better communicate that you want the logo on the left.If your goal is to get a logo on the right, then say that you want a bubbly logo, with a character or a drawing, not a stick figure outline or just a silhouette .  For the colours request vibrant shades and effects that will make the logo look three dimensional.  Say that you want a cartoonish logo and that would help as well.  That way your custom logo design will appear just how you want it.
  3. Use images for illustration – You know the saying that a picture is worth a thousand words? Often it really is, especially when it comes to logo instructions. Our happiest customers got the logo they wanted right off the bat because they provided an example image of what they wanted.
What client provided as illustration: What client received:
example lion logo design instructions dma-chosen-logo
What client provided as illustration: What client received:
example bestplay logo design instructions

Planning Your Logo?

As you look for a logo designer, keep in mind that a designer needs to pair creativity with great technical expertise. For example:

  • If the wrong design program is used, your logo will blur when resized.
  • If unprintable colors are used, your logo will look wrong when printed.
  • If final quality control is skipped, your logo will have costly mistakes.

Business owner trying to save a few bucks just end up paying twice to redo their logo and reprint their marketing material. Avoid surprises, by learning about impossible colors, vector graphics, and the importance of quality control. Learn more

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