Today’s logo submission got me thinking about a problem that many logos have. Sometime the designer designs it to look nice and give a professional face to the business. Maybe the designer wants to keep it simple, and just use text. Then they want to dress it up with something, so they add a drop shadow or an underline. Things are added to make it look unique, without thought to how this relates to the business.

The company’s purpose should always be foremost in the designer’s mind throughout the design process. Manas sent this in telling us that it is for a social networking site. Is that what it communicates? No. In response to the question “what will the logo be used for?”, he put: to represent the brand. Does the logo represent any brand? I would say, possibly a little, since the name is there. But it doesn’t represent what the company does.

First off, let’s use a typeface that’s a little more unique. We want to set the company apart from the hundreds of other social networking sites. Next, let’s customize the text a little. I brought the cap height down a little on the L, K, H, and T. The underline was doing nothing, so I used it as an arch to communicate between two letters, which is the purpose of a social networking site. You could do the same with a dotted line, or intersecting speech bubbles. The important thing is that it looks nice AND communicates a message. Every part of it should have a reason to be there. This is how boring logos can become custom logos, tailored to the client’s business.

Tags: agency logo design, brand, brandmarks, Business Logos, corporate logo design, criticism, critique, custom logo design, design, feedback, graphic design, logo, logo design, review

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 2nd, 2012 at 10:06 am and is filed under Logo Design 101, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.