The 10 Commandments of Logo Design
Like typography, logo design has some fairly hard and fast rules which you need to consider when designing your (or your client’s) logo. Of course you don’t have to be bound by these rules, but the old adage of ‘if it looks right, it probably is’ certainly applies here. There is obviously some flexibility, but if you understand the principals of why these ‘rules’ exist, then you won’t go far wrong. This info graphic goes hand in hand with ‘the 10 commandments of typography’ which you can find here.
- Keep your logo simple – an over complicated logo will appear harder to read the smaller it is, you also need to consider how your logo will look in other media’s i.e. sign-writing in cut vinyl
- Do not add tone to your logo – once again, tone is impossible to replicate in cut vinyls, and may also appear differently if using the logo in black and white, or printed at lower resolution i.e. newsprint.
- Do not use raster images – as someone who works with print you will be familiar with why we prefer using vector images or at least a minimum of 300dpi, otherwise you run the risk of the logo appearing pixelated when it is scaled up.
- Your logo should be scalable – again, as above you need a logo that doesn’t lose quality when it is scaled up, think billboards, or large posters.
- Do not use too many colours – the more colours you use, the more visually distracting the logo becomes, making it harder for the viewer to see what it actually represents.
- Too many fonts kill the charm – at the most stick to two fonts, the ‘the 10 commandments of typography’ which you can find here does a good job of explaining why this rule is important.
- Do not outline your logo – adding an outline or ‘stroke’ to your logo adds nothing, again its a visual distraction adding more noise.
- Do not write on your logo – a seemingly obvious one, your logo should convey enough information in the text part of it, without having to add text to the logo itself.
- Avoid putting the logo in a box – there shouldn’t be a reason for putting a box around your logo, it should be able to hold itself together well enough without needing a frame.
- And lastly, flat doesn’t mean an icon – just because the current trend is ‘flat design’ doesn’t mean that it has to look like an app icon.
Credit to Designmantic for the original artwork