Ensuring your brand remains consistent across the entire marketing mix and across every communications channel is essential to maintaining a consistent and coherent image in any competitive marketplace and should be the first consideration of your marketing agency.vThe variety of different marketing channels available to any company today each have their own specific demands and their own rules. A design might look great on your business card or letterhead but may look completely different on a poster, tube card, direct mail piece, display advertisement or online in your website.
Print management with a view to not only cost effectiveness, but also how your brand is expressed to its maximum impact across all above, below and through the line channels is vital to effective communication with your target audiences. Central to all this is the initial corporate id design, aside from its creativity and how it captures the spirit of your proposition, how effectively it can be translated across all those myriad expressions will determine its longevity and impact. There are a few important points to remember when designing logos or corporate ID and here are some guidelines to a successful outcome:
A logo designed in a vector based program such as Illustrator allows for much more flexibility in terms of colours and will give you a much clearer image especially if there is text in the logo and you want to be able to use it in large format. Bearing this in mind, it is often not a good idea to use a photograph in a logo. If you can?t use a vector based program then design it large!
Stick to using just one or two fonts in your logo. Over-use of different fonts will often leave a logo looking cluttered and unprofessional. Any text used in a logo should be clear and legible, or don?t use text at all.
You may need to use your logo for a variety of different purposes and in different ways. Remember that what looks good on A4 print materials may not be so wonderful by the time it?s been expanded to fit exhibition graphics or a billboard. Whatever you create should be able to work well from the smallest to the largest of applications.
You may want to use the logo on black or white backgrounds or dark or light coloured backgrounds so the logo should work equally well as a stand-alone element or in a coloured box. Allow for the fact that your logo may need to be used in mono or single colour as well.
You have probably seen some designs that you like but try to make your logo as individual as possible. There is nothing wrong with using aspects from other logo designs that you find appealing, but in the end you want to be noticed because your logo is original.
