You’ve heard about the “Great Resignation,” people reevaluating their lives during the pandemic and quitting their dead-end jobs in droves. As a result of this trend, many people are starting their own businesses and in need of logo design services.
However, budgets for startups can be tight. You may feel the need to cut corners by bypassing the graphic design firm and creating your logo. With tools like Canva at your fingertips, it’s never been easier.
But just because you can, doesn’t necessarily mean you should.
Essential Logo Design Tips
We get it. Sometimes you just don’t have the budget to hire a professional designer. If you’re going to design your own logo, please review these tips. That way when you work with a graphic designer in the future, you’ll have usable logo files and won’t have to spend money to have them redesigned.
Design Considerations
For DIY logo design, your best bet is to keep it simple. A few rules of thumb: Avoid clip art, limit your word count, and choose your colors wisely—don’t go overboard. Also ask yourself the following questions:
- Does the logo reflect the purpose and personality of your business?
- Is it memorable?
- Does it look like your competitors’ logos, or does it set you apart?
- Does it use your branded colors and fonts, if you have any?
- How will your logo be used? For mostly print or digital?
- Does it scale well for small and large formats?
- How will it translate to embroidery if you need apparel?
Carefully Select a Font
The most important rule of choosing a font: Never use Comic Sans on anything EVER. Also be cautious of using overly ornate script fonts as they can be hard to read. And we’ve all seen these classic examples of funny typography mistakes. While they may be good for a chuckle, please don’t let this happen to you.
Create Several Versions
When you hire a professional to design your logo, they’ll give you several different versions. Here are some you may need:
- Horizontal
- Vertical
- Square or round icons for social media
- Full Color
- Single Color
- Black & White
- Transparent Background (PNG)
Design and Export Your Logo as Vector Files
What the heck are “vector” files? In plain terms, these are files that can be enlarged without losing quality. In other words, you want logo files that can be used on something small like a business card or scaled up large enough to put on a billboard or a truck. You want your logo files saved in the one of the following formats: .SVG, .EPS, or .AI.
Why is there even a low-resolution option for logos? Why isn’t everything just vector?
Low resolution, “raster,” or JPG and PNG versions exist because they take up very little memory. A vector file might be over a megabyte in size while a JPG or PNG might take up a few kilobytes. For printing, it doesn’t matter how big a file you have. However, a JPG or PNG will load faster on a website.
It’s easy to create a new logo using old JPGs slapped together in Canva, but they’ll look pixelated when you go to print it. Typically, printing something high quality requires 300 dpi (dots per inch) resolution. A JPG saved for a website or digital distribution has a resolution of 72 dpi, so that’s something else to look out for.
IMPORTANT: You can always save a vector file as a JPG, PNG, or other smaller files. You can’t save a JPG or PNG as a vector. If you need design help in the future and don’t have the right usable files, it will end up costing you anyway for a graphic designer to recreate your logo in the correct vector format.
Why You Should Hire a Professional Graphic Designer
You can learn many useful skills by watching YouTube videos. You may even be able teach yourself Adobe Illustrator. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you understand the underlying principles of good design.
Just because it has wheels and rolls doesn’t mean your go-kart is a Ferrari. There are times in life when it’s better to hire an expert. This is one of those times.
Need more convincing? Keep in mind that most trained graphic designers earn their Bachelor of Arts degrees from accredited four-year colleges. They are experts in their field, and isn’t that really who you want to design the visual representation of your brand? No matter if you need graphic design services now or down the road, our professional designers are here for you.
