Tips On Logo Design

I recently decided to re-design my website logo. Its part of a long term plan to go freelance on the side. But before I could go ahead and design the business cards, create the headed paper and ultimately spend a lot of money I needed to be 100% satisfied with the way I represent myself. This isn’t a definitive guide, I don’t claim to be a guru. I’m just sharing my experience and things I have learned along the way.

Before You Begin

Before firing up photoshop, or doodling sketches, I had a long hard think about what I wanted “The Odin” to be. This sounds obvious, I mean I design and develop websites,  but its really something you should take your time over. This is important because how the logo looks will set the theme for what your company or site is about. I knew I wanted something subtle and understated, but at the same time it needed to be sophisticated enough to show any potential clients I mean business and I know what Im doing. Once your comfortable with what you want your direction to be, you should start think about the logo.

Get Some Inspiration

Before I got too far down the line, I looked at what the big boys were doing, and what made them stand out, I took examples from logos I liked, such as carsonified, FUEL and my personal favorite Function. They all have distinctive designed logos and their is a lot to be said for observation. I find this practice extremely useful and until you have completely deconstructed something, you cannot fully understand and appreciate it.

Its All About The Typography

There are a million things you can do with typography, there are entire sites and blog rolls dedicated to this art form, If you want some inspiration check out typographica and i love typography. The key to having a unique logo, is to think about the way the letters in your logo fit together, Certain letters do this, veryy well, try to explore the possibilities, with letter spacing and line kerning. There are a few places you can go to get great fonts, fontcubes is a brilliant resource, da font is another, both of which offer you a massive range of free fonts to download and use.

The logo I have used started with a simple font, which I modified, in to what became the final product. But the only real way to achieve this is by trial and error, use a lot of fonts and try everything, you may come up with something you love by the chance of putting together something you would not have expected to work. I wont lie, this can be a long and arduous process, but it will present you with results, you just have to stick at it.

To Suffix Or Not To Suffix

This was a question I spend a lot of time researching. It became somewhat clear to me however that most online companies these days have dropped the .com or .co.uk or whatever the suffix may be. Although there are many reasons for this, I personally believe that its down to the very way people search the Internet, its no longer about memorable URL’s in the taxonomy of web its about tagging, and searching and SEO and all those things which make your website so much easier to find, For that reason I left out the suffix as a bold move towards the future.

Trial Is Not An Error

I have a saying that I often use in the face of defeat, and although sometimes I question it myself. I always stick to it. “failure is the long way round to success”. I went through numerous attempts at designs before I got close to any that I thought were worth pursuing as you can see; but sticking with it did pay off,

Use Illustrator

I must admit I myself am guilty of creating everything in photoshop, but its especially important when you are designing logos, to use a vector based program such as Adobe Illustrator for the final product. It will make the design look much cleaner and will save you all sorts of hassle when you come to re-size the design for different media.

The Final Product

Probably one of the most important, if not the most important tips I can give, is to get feedback. It may not always be what you want to hear, and so don’t take it to heart, but if you listen to what people are telling you, and act upon their advise, you may well end up with something that looks even better. On that note I would like to present you with my final design, and call upon anyone reading this, to leave their feedback and suggestions, so that The Odin can move forward and grow from this experience.