lack of experience leads to lack of planning, leads to lack of options across media, leads to inconsistent usage of the logo, leads to dilution of the brand.

2. create flexible solutions

lack of separability between logotype and emblem is the most common mistake made by amateur designers. either make your word the logo itself, or make your image and text work together and apart. keep the elements as simple and recognizable as possible. as the saying goes, your design is complete when there’s nothing else that can be taken away.

3. put it in context.

your lovely new design might look great on a white page with plenty of space, but how about when it’s got to fit in a magazine layout or online banner? orientation and proportion are critical. something square isn’t beautiful and something wide and skinny or tall and skinny is going to give you nightmares when you have to design a skyscraper or regular header banner. this is where separation of emblem and logotype can give you flexibility, allowing you alternative configurations for different space constraints. try to keep things in a harmonious shape – a 2:1 rectangle or thereabouts is good. landscape is better than portrait.

4. think opposite

the next mistake is to assume that your background is always going to be white. sorry, somebody is going need to slap your logo onto a dark background at some stage. design a reversed out option.

5. always design for the lowest common denominator

inexperienced designers start off with all kinds of raster effects, images etc.. okay, so perhaps some brands do happen online, but you’re going to need to use print media, or do something using flexo or vinyl eventually. google, amazon, youtube, flickr, microsoft, apple etc can all testify to a simple basic logo first up.

6. don’t be selfish

72dpi raster logos in powerpoint presentations are just not cool. sure, i could be all arrogant and tell the client to get me a high quality logo, but we all know that leaving logo requisition to the client ends up with the designer worse off… i generally save my logos with an emf option, which i import into office. vector information is preserved for the poor sod who gets the powerpoint file next. and when client prints it, it maintains its quality.

7. make a ci

i don’t care if it’s a 1 pager. just let me know the technical details so that when i get the logo and you’ve left the planet, i can recreate it without having to trawl through my font program or faff around on whatthefont. i don’t want to guess the colours.

8. understand colour gamuts.

if you don’t, look it up. make sure that cmyk and rgb values stay faithful across media. pantone swatchbooks are a good starting point. if you don’t have one, make friends with someone who does.

9. educate your client.

critical and too often overlooked. manage expectations. most clients don’t understand any technicalities around colour variations across media, costs involved in spot vs cmyk printing, vector vs raster quality, various file formats, file sizes, resolutions, aspect ratios etc. if you don’t educate them, frustration on both sides is bound to occur.