Loco Logos! Creating Effective Logos

June 5th, 2007 | email this | digg it

Leave your comment Posted by Benjamin Cass

^need I even say more? No, I don’t.

BAMM! You instantly recognize the logo above. You know that it belongs to the billion dollar company “Nike,” and that it has been deemed “The Swoosh.” The memories of Michael Jordan and his “Air Jordans” float into your cerebellum, and the multi-million dollar ad campaigns of Nike surface, along with your current articles of clothing with a “Swoosh” embroidered on them.

Fun fact: In 1971, college student (at-the-time) Carolyn Davidson created the Nike Swoosh and was compensated for creating one of the world’s most popular symbols with a measly $2/hour paycheck… yikes.

Now that you see how drastic an impact logos can have on the brain of the average consumer, here are some tips of making a logo of your own. I have written these quick questions that should be answered before designing your logo:

What is the name of your company/website/product/blog?
Who is the target audience of your company/website/product/blog?
Is there a certain tagline that should be provided in the logo design?
What would you like to standout about your company/website/product/blog?

Those are the preliminary questions and must be answered before you begin to draft out logo ideas.

Next comes the trial and error. Begin drawing out logo ideas with a good ol’ paper and pencil. Try emphasizing different aspects of your company name/website/product/blog in different positions and sizes. I would recommend having at least 15 different logo designs before choosing one (I usually draw out at least 50, which can make the decision-making process a wee-bit hard sometimes ). Below is 1/8 of my draft designs of a logo for TheDallasExperiment.com.

Once choosing a draft logo to work with, it is time to move into a drawing program where you can create vector graphics (Adobe Illustrator is recommended). Vector graphics are rescalable, which is a necessity when creating mass-produced logos.

How you make your logo is strictly up to you, there are good Adobe tutorials here which can help you in the creation of your logo.

While making it, be sure that you:

Properly identify what message you want to get across to the public regarding your company/website/product/blog.
Create creativity in your logo, making it aesthetically pleasing to the eye and grabbing the viewers attention.
Balance the aspects of your logo. Be sure that it is artistically balanced.
Create with professionalism in mind. Many people develop judgements based on a companie’s logo.
Be Distinctive in every aspect of your logo. Be sure that the exaggerated is exaggerated.
Make it timeless. Create with the future in mind!
Don’t steal other people’s designs and ideas, make yours come from the heart!