Creating a logo

When thinking about the face of your company, it’s not going to be the employees or the management. It’s not going to be what kind of a building you operate out of. The face of your company is the logo. The face of your company is the first thing a person sees when coming to your website: your logo. With that basic understanding, it is tremendously important to have your logo look proper.

There are three steps to making your logo look proper. Each step is its own process; however, these three are the basic steps required to setting up your logo. By following these three steps, you’ll be able to create the perfect logo that will say “This is my company, that’s that.” Here are the steps:

• Do you just want it to say a name or do you want it to be something truly unique?
• Will the logo be used only for your site or all future advertising?
• What’s the final look going to be?

If you just want the name of your company is nice print, that’s simple. However, if you want it to be unique, it’ll be important to create a plan for it. What this means is you’re going to sit down and sketch out some ideas. Chances are, you’re not an artist, but you have an idea of what you want. Sketch it out.

The next step is to determine if this logo is going to be just for your site or if it will be plastered all over the place for advertising. If you create an ad, you may want to use that logo. However, you may only want it to be used for your site. Determining this will help you to better understand what it should look like.

Finally, what’s the final look? Here’s where you want to find a company that can do it. Since we’re in Atlanta, you could hire us to do it. You sit down with us, we draw out a plan and we execute it. You can do it yourself, but sometimes, it’s better to hire a professional Atlanta graphic design group to do it in this case.

Your logo is one of the most important aspects of your company. It’s brand recognition. You need to be recognized. If you’re not, you’re as common as the next average company. We don’t want common. We want exceptional.

Logo Creation: step 2

adobe-photoshop

Congratulations! You have just accomplished the hard tasks of getting a logo created. Now that you have done that, you can do the final step which is to sit down with your local graphic design group, in this case, Atlanta graphic design. The process of sitting down with the group does not have to be a daunting one and, in actuality, it really isn’t all that hard so long as you follow a certain number of rules.

• Present your sketches and be as open as you can about what you want. You’re not an artist, but they are, so they are going to want to run with it a little bit. See what they have to say, but don’t be afraid to say, “No, not interested.” They may be artists, but you’re paying for it. In the end, it’s what YOU want.
• That leads to the next point of determining the number of revisions you get. Some firms provide only one revision while others provide an unlimited amount. The truth about revisions, though, is that if you and the designer really plan everything out in detail, there is no need to have revisions.
• Plan everything out. Talk about the colors and if you want the dot on top of the “i” to be large or small. Determine everything so that when the designer gets to work, he or she has their notes in front of them to get to work on the logo as soon as possible. This is tremendously important. Notes are KEY.
• Understand that a lot of firms have an upfront fee. That means that they want you to pay a percentage of the cost and then the rest upon completion. This is to ensure that they don’t scammed, but it’s also a way for you to know that you’re going to get your money’s worth. Once you invest, they’ve got to provide a good product. It’s really that simple.

These are four rules of dealing with the graphic design firm and getting your logo created as effectively as possible. Getting through each step from your sketches to your supplemental designs for advertising to the final product doesn’t have to be hard. It simply requires a little bit of pizzazz and some delegation to create that perfect product.

Most importantly, though, is to get that product. You want to have the product and want to ensure that it is exactly what your site needs. Congratulations! You’ve got your logo and have started down the path of creating that brand that people cannot, even if they wanted to, forget.

The final part of your logo creation

As we’ve been discussing over the past few days, there are some procedures to creating a logo before even considering coming to a graphic design group. The previous post was to decide whether you wanted to use your company name as your logo or something unique. Now that you’ve determined what you want to use for your logo, the next step is to determine whether you are going to use that logo for only your website or if it will be used for your advertising as well.

Using the logo for only your site can really help you to have something tremendously unique that looks good for the site only. However, often times, if you make your logo exclusive to your site, building that brand for the site is limited. The only way that people know what the logo stands for is to come to your site rather than getting the logo out there as much as possible.

This is often an issue for people, but not one that needs to become a problem. There are ways around it. For instance, if you were to Google Intel logos, you’d see that there are different types. There is the basic Intel one that has the circle around it, but then there are ones that say Intel Inside and things like that. It allows you to use your logo, but also use it elsewhere. Another example would be to look at the different variations of the Apple logo. There are some that are silver, the old ones used to be a rainbow. The logo stayed the same, but when advertising, they’d change it up.

What does all this mean for you?

It means that when creating your logo for branding abilities, you want to get one that can be manipulated for your needs. While you may want your logo to be blue and red on your site; you may create a product down the line and decide that you want it to be the exact same logo, but in brown and green. By creating a more diverse logo – one for both advertising and your site – you can better market and brand your site.

Congratulations…You’ve now accomplished two out of three steps to creating a successful logo. The first one was to sketch out your plan to guarantee that it works perfectly for you. The next was to decide whether or not you wanted to use it for advertising or not. This would give you the chance to sketch other forms out. The final step is how to deal with the graphic design company that is going to make your graphics.