The Principles of Good Logo Design
Logo design is playing an increasingly vital role in the personalisation of companies, products, and services. As the cornerstone of brand identity, a good logo helps set the stage for the development of a successful and long-lasting brand. Designing an exceptional logo is time consuming and a lot of hard work. To be able to interpret a design brief and come up with a design concept that distills the very essence of a company takes a very unique individual. Aside from having a combination of raw talent, communication skills and a lot of patience (to name a few), it is essential that the designer develops an astute understanding of the basic principles of what makes a good logo design. A good logo should be; simple, distinctive, relevant, memorable, timeless, and versatile. Lets take a look at those principles in more detail. 1. Simple Example: Seven Network (Australia) Logo Designed by Ken Cato, in 2003 A good logo is simple in its construction, but not in its concept. Quite often to the inexperienced eye, a good logo may look so simple that it looks like it was put together in a matter of minutes. The vast majority of logo designs that are both simple and successful are backed by many hours of research and unused concepts that never made the cut. It is usually the result of an extensive and exhaustive logo design process. Another advantage of simplicity in logo design is that a simple logo is much more likely to align with the other five principles of good logo design: distinctive, relevant, memorable, timeless and versatile. 2. Distinctive Example: Apple Logo Original Designed by Rob Janoff, in 1977 A distinctive logo stands out from the crowd and will overall be unique in appearance. A logo that is unique will have an essence that somehow distinguishes it from the pack. It should be distinctive while also effectively portraying the clients business requirements. Given that there are millions of logos currently in existence, and hundreds, if not thousands of new ones being created everyday, it is increasingly difficult to design a logo that is distinctive. The ability to design distinctive logos on a consistent basis makes an exceptional logo designer. 3. Relevant Amazon.com Logo Designed by Turner Duckworth, in 2000 A good logo design will be relevant to the industry, the client and the target market. If you are designing a logo for a kindergarten, it should be fair to say that it shouldn’t look like it was designed for a bank, and vice-versa. To design a relevant logo the designer should not rely on the design brief alone. All clients and their respective industries are different, no matter how straight-forward they may seem at first glance. By conducting further research, it will help to create a relevant design that speaks directly to the intended audience. 4. Memorable Nike Logo Designed by Carolyn Davidson, in 1971 A well designed logo will be committed to memory at a single glance, and will be easily recalled by the viewer. [...]