Remember, first impressions count. Your logo is the first thing your potential customers and clients will see.
Here are the top five logo mistakes to avoid when designing your masterpiece.
1. Poor Font Choices
Remember that each font has a personality, and it’s all about choosing the right “persona” for your brand. If you are a stockbroker, for instance, using the Comic Sans font for your corporation’s logo probably isn’t the best way to project trustworthiness and reliability. A party supplies company, meanwhile, may not want to present their customers with a dark, heavy font.
Match the style of your font with the style of your icon to avoid competing with it or overwhelming it. For a better selection of fonts, choose professional font foundries such as MyFonts rather than free website versions.
Choosing a font is more important than you probably realize. It’s setting the tone and the expectations of your business.
2. Contradictory Messages and Unclear Intentions
The second fatal logo mistake is when it sends an inconsistent message about your company or brand. This emotional perception of your message is a combination of your font, colors, and images.
Since customers will associate your company with your branding, the messages and emotions you want associated with your business need to be immediately apparent. Remember, first impressions count.
Let’s revisit our stockbroker. This is a profession that requires trustworthiness, reliability, and expertise. A bright design featuring a clown, for instance? Not the best choice. Our party supply company, however, will send a clear message of “fun” with brighter colors, lighter fonts, and maybe even our stockbroker’s unused clown.
3. Too “Busy”
If there is visually has too much going on, it’s forgettable. This logo mistake will also undermine the importance of your message and lessen its impact.
Your brand will be recreated in a variety of applications for your business, from digital to print. Keep in mind that a busy, complex design will lose its detail if its size is reduced. A simple, clean design will be far more versatile than a complex or “busy” design.
Stick with a few simple elements:
- Your business name
- Your icon
- Your tagline
- No more than two fonts
- No more than three colors
4. Too Reliant on Colors
It’s tempting to want to make your logo really stand out with bold, bright splashes of color. If you’re too reliant on color, however, you will lose its efficacy when it’s reproduced in black and white. Too many colors also confuse the eye, making your branding appear “busy” and sloppy.
If your brand can’t stand on its own in black and white, it’s not a strong one. Create your initial concept without using colors, shadows, layering, or other design elements. Once you’ve created something that can stand out in black and white, it’s time to choose your colors.
Remember to keep your design under three colors, and choose them widely. Color, as we talked about above, play a large role in your logo’s intent. Certain colors convey strong emotions, such as red or black.
If your colors clash with each other, overwhelm your icon, or don’t match your intention, your logo will be far less effective.
5. Neglecting Visual Hierarchy
We’ve all come across words painted on the road near an intersection that read “stop here,” with the word “here” overtop the word “stop.” The idea is that you theoretically should read the words in the order that your car approaches them, reading “stop” before “here.” The majority of people, however, will read the words painted on our theoretical road from top to bottom: “here stop.” But why?
We are all programmed to visualize things in a certain way, seeing bright colors or large, bold writing before noticing smaller writing or duller colors. This programming creates a logical way to consume information. Visual hierarchy is a design element that uses this logic to encourage a viewer to read or notice important information first.
Think about visual hierarchy. What part of your design catches your eye? Does the flow make logical sense? Are the important pieces being overshadowed by bright colors or other strong design elements?
Want to avoid these common logo mistakes?
Whether you’re thinking of a complete overhaul or simply giving your existing one an update, ArachnidWorks has talented creative teams ready to help. Let us help you design your next logo to help you stand out from the competition.
