12 Principles of Logo Design

To be prominent from a competitor, you have to create a unique style to show your design features, not imitate or even copy other designs or styles, only innovation can stand out.

Logo (Brand logo) is the brand's "face", so extremely important, a design excellent logo is the important asset of the brand. However, only by excellent graphic design does not guarantee the design of the logo is an impressive and vivid brand identity.

Just as different industries have their specific skills, logo design also requires designers to continue to learn, accumulate experience to achieve success, for all graphic designers, knowledge is ability.

Based on this, we have summed up the design of the logo must follow the 12 principles for reference:

1. Initial work must be limited

The initial sketch is an important starting step for designing logos. You can simply hand-draw a pencil on a piece of paper, or use a vector tool in the illustrator software to paint a draft. Once you skip or hastily end this step, it will affect the final design results.

Prepare 20 to 30 sketches or ideas, and expand them to create a variety of extended ideas for the original idea. If these sketches don't work, you'll need to start over and sketch the new ideas.

A good graphic designer spends more time on initial work than on any of the next steps.

2. Coordination of

Coordination is also important in logo design, because in a person's experience, balanced and coordinated design is delightful and attractive. When the figure, color, size of the "proportion" in all parts equal, the entire design can achieve balanced coordination.

Although the principle of harmonization can be broken occasionally, remember that the logo you design is for the public, not those who look at the great art, so it is safest to maintain the harmony of the design.

3. Large size Relationship

For logo design, size is very important. A logo must be scaled to any size to look clear and legible. If a logo is reduced for letterhead, envelopes, or other small promotional objects when the sharpness is too low, then this logo is not successful. The same logo in the amplification after the use of posters, billboards or electronic format on television, the Internet, also must be very clear and easy to identify.

The surest way to determine if a logo is scaled to all sizes is to test it yourself. Note that it is usually the hardest to reach the minimum size, so you can print the logo on the letterhead or envelope at the outset to check for clarity. You can also print a logo in the print shop to enlarge the size of the poster to test.

4. Use color skillfully

Color theory is complex, but as long as you understand the basics, designers can use color to add points to the design.

The basic rules to keep in mind are:

Y choose a similar color in the color wheel (for example: Need warm tones, choose red, orange and yellow).

Do not use too bright eyes, so that the eyes uncomfortable color.

Ÿlogo must also look good in black and white, grayscale and two colors.

Y sometimes break the routine, just to make sure the reason is full!

It is also important to know how color triggers feelings and moods. Red, for example, can create a variety of sensations: aggression, love, passion, and power.

Remember this when you experiment with different color combinations, and the colors should match the overall tone and brand feeling. It's a good idea to choose one color alone, and some brands have a high degree of recognition in their own particular color. For example, when you mention John Deere, you naturally associate itself with its unique green, which distinguishes the Deere brand from its competitors, and, more importantly, makes the public more memorable and more recognizable.

5. Design style and brand matching

When designing a logo you can use a different style and choose the most appropriate one, so you should have a good understanding of the customer and the background of the brand.

The recent Web 2.0 style of 3-dimensional logo design is very popular, this logo with "blistering" image, gradient and shadow. This style may be perfect for Web 2.0 Web sites or technology companies, but not for the rest of the brands.

Before you start your initial work, you need to investigate your customers and their brand's customer base. This helps you to determine the best design style from the outset, eliminating the hassle of repetitive initial work.

6. Text typesetting is very important

For many first-time designers, choosing the right font and size is harder than you think. If the logo design contains text, whether it is part of the logo or in the slogan, you need to spend time sorting out the different fonts-usually dozens of-to experiment to make the final decision. Serif fonts, non-serif fonts, handwriting, italic, bold, and custom fonts are tried.

The following three points are mainly considered when choosing logo fonts:

Y avoid the most commonly used fonts, such as comic Sans; or other fonts that might make the design look "unprofessional."

Y ensures that fonts are easy to recognize when narrowing, especially handwriting.

Y uses the same font best to avoid two or more fonts being used at the same time.

Custom fonts are strongly recommended. The more original the font, the more prominent the brand. Examples of success with such custom fonts are Yahoo, Twitter and Coca-Cola.

7. The pursuit of awareness

The significance of logo design is to build brand awareness, so how should this be done? Of course, different cases are not the same, but the purpose of the design is to give the average person the ability to remember the brand at a glance. For example, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, McDonald's and Nike logo design is very successful, customers can recognize the corresponding brand at a glance.

By combining the elements discussed in the article, including clarity, style, color, text, and originality in different sizes, you can design a popular, highly cognitive logo.

Once any of these elements are omitted, the final design will be unsatisfactory. Check to see if your own design contains all the elements. You can reverse the logo in the graphic design software and check if the logo is still recognizable and use this method to quickly determine if your design has enough awareness. In addition, you should also test the recognition of the logo under the mirror.

Remember that in reality the logo is not just on the bus body or on the billboard that you are driving through, so you can't guarantee that people will always see the logo in front of you. To do this you should test the logo from all angles, and make sure that the logo is recognizable in any direction before you can submit the design to the customer.

8. Dare to Innovate

To be prominent from a competitor, you have to create a unique style to show your design features, not imitate or even copy other designs or styles, only innovation can stand out.

So how can you be different? Try to break the routine and take some risk. Try a variety of different styles and pick out the best works for your customers; try a variety of color combinations until you find a truly novel and unique combination of logos.

"Topsy" You use the design software, in the sense of the design to the standard before the logo is constantly trimmed.

9. Simple and clear

The simpler the logo, the easier it is to identify and remember. Just like Nike's logo is extremely simple, but is one of the world's most recognized logo. In the early stages of design: brainstorming and paint sketches should follow "simple and straightforward" rules.

Usually, you will find that the logo at the beginning of the design is relatively complex, and the final version is relatively simple. Focus on designing the core elements, ignoring the rest of the unnecessary elements.

10. Use special effects with caution

Adobe Illustrator, Freehand, Photoshop and other graphic design software is very powerful, you can add filters on the logo and many other effects, but do not get carried away, these tools, although powerful, but not all used in logo design. Of course, the appropriate use of tools to increase the attractiveness of the logo is understandable, but to keep in mind that simplicity is the key.

11. Design "Pipeline"

If you want to consistently design a high-quality logo, you need to build your own design process, that is, "pipeline", the following steps:

Y Research

Y brainstorming, think of ideas

Y early Sketch

Y Building Vector Design

Y Send to Customer

Y according to customer comments modified

Y complete the design, submit the customer

In the case of following these basic steps, you can fine-tune the order of the steps. This can improve work efficiency, maintain a sense of working, focus, design a better work, and ensure that each design is maintained in high quality.

12. Reference works not plagiarism

The final design rule is simple: do not copy other designers ' work! It's OK to look for inspiration from other designers ' works, but it's morally and legally wrong to copy other people's ideas or work.

You can get vector material for free from the image website, which is based on the "authoring common" license agreement, but I strongly recommend that you do not use this method. In the brainstorming phase you can use these sites to find ideas, but it's best to get inspiration from your own graffiti and start designing, completely original.