How to Find a Good Logo Designer: Knowing What You Want
Posted on July 16th, 2010 in Small Business | No Comments »
Finding a good logo designer is easier than ever in the internet age, but picking that designer out of a crowd can be tough if you don’t have a lot of expertise. After all, if you knew a ton about logo design, you probably wouldn’t need to hire a logo designer in the first place! As daunting as finding (and working with) the right designer might seem, there are a few basic lessons that can help you seperate the proverbial wheat from the metaphorical chaffe. In today’s lesson, we’re going to talk about knowing what you want in a logo in the first place.
While this lesson may seem pretty clear-cut, it’s arguably the biggest pitfall that you have to overcome. Knowing what you want in a logo isn’t quite as simple as you might think. Fortunately, there are some simple, easy to learn guidelines that can get you started.
It’s not critical to know exactly what you want in a logo–again, you’re hiring a designer for their expertise–but knowing the basics will help you work with your designer to get a great result. Before you even start thinking about what you’re looking for, we strongly recommend reading this article by David Airey. Airey lays down the five critical guidelines that every great logo should follow. As he explains:
Iconic logos are:
1.Describable
2.Memorable
3.Effective without colour
4.Scalable i.e. work when just an inch in size
5.Relevant to the industry in question
There are two items we’d add to this list. The first thing that we’d add–as sort of a logical conclusion to the five points–is that simplicity is your friend. If your logo is a complicated piece, it will be difficult for your audience to describe (and, by extension, remember) it will be difficult to scale, and, in all likelihood, it will lose its effectiveness without color.
The next point we’d add is that a good logo should be something you can love. At the end of the day, any small business is going to live and die with the decisions that its owner makes. You don’t want to be overcritical, you don’t want to be paralyzed by perfectionism, but you also don’t want to represent your business (and, by extension, yourself) with a logo that you hate.
