The designers here at BusinessLogos have designed thousands of logos, and have had the chance to critique and revise thousands more. Every day we see these common mistakes that customers and designers make, which cause their business to look weak, unprofessional, and will end up costing the companies sales, respect and profit.

You don’t have to have a huge budget to get quality design, but you DO have to pay for experience, so that you can avoid these mistakes.

This icon is available through stock art stores like Shutterstock, and also through most of the designers on DesignCrowd.

5. Uncopyrightable Design

You find this with crowdsourced design companies like 99designs or DesignCrowd. The designers can’t spend a lot of time on each logo, so they recycle clip art or re-use designs they’ve made for other companies. There’s no system in place to prevent the same art being used my multiple companies, so there is no way to copyright the logo. We’ve spoken with many upset customers that have found this out the hard way.

4. Too Many Elements

"Great, now we just need some napkins, because that's another thing we provide."

The idea of the logo is to put a professional “signature” on your business. It is not your entire brand message, nor a sales brochure for your business. It should not bear the burden of communicating every aspect for business (that’s what your marketing is for). But too many business owners want to make sure every product, service, or design idea they can come up with is included in the logo, making it a convoluted mess.

This also happens when business owners receive their initial concepts form a design company, and want to “add value” to their design purchase by piling on ideas. Again, this makes your message LESS clear, and will turn off clients and potential business partners.

3. Amateur Design 

It’s a trusim in every aspect of the business world: you get what you pay for. If you have your 10-year old niece draw your logo’s character for $5, the value will show. If you get 100 designs for $50, the value will show.

2. Unnecessary Text

If you need to have a tagline, great; just leave it out of the logo. Let it be a part of your business card or website. The idea of a logo is to get it stripped down to the essentials, and your address and hours or operation are not essentials. LLC and INC are legally required in your legal documents, but not in your logo, and they tend to make your logo look less professional.

1. Not Designing with All Uses In Mind

The reason logo design is all about simplicity is because your logo needs to be flexible. It’s going to be used in different ways, like embroidery, web and animation. It’s print requirements will be different from it’s web requirements. So it’s not a good idea to use too many gradients and complex illustrations, because that doesn’t translate well to embroidery, for example. Experienced designers know how to design logos that will work for all forms of media that you might use.

Getting your logo done right is a very important part of starting your business. It’s worth the cost to have it done right. See the team at BusinessLogos to make sure your business gets the logo it deserves.

Once again, we bring you another Mad Men fan illustration, done by Paul browning. Draper’s character is partially based on Draper Daniels, the creative head of the Leo Burnett advertising agency in Chicago in the 1950s who created the Marlboro Man campaign. However, some of the advertising techniques and the professional accomplishments of Don Draper are based on those of Rosser Reeves, who rose to chairman of the Ted Bates agency.

To get quality artwork like this in a custom logo design, go see the experts at BusinessLogos.com.

This was submitted to us by Augustino Nguyen, a designer in Vietnam. What do you all think?

I personally think it’s a very interesting name, but I went to iBrand first to check it out before I realized it’s i3rand. It’s not a name that rolls easily off the tongue, but it is unique. The logo is a little too simple for my taste. Maybe its the Myriad Bold font.

To see more examples of logo design, go to our website.

This logo design was sent to us by a designer named Mikey Maruszak, who made it for his place of business, Printplace.

What does everyone think?

I think the .com is too small to be seen. I like the graphic, and the font. Maybe the ink and P’s could be a little bigger within that drop icon. I hope you’re using that face as a mascot on the body of an owl. I could see that working.

Everyone knows a start-up often does not have deep pockets to spend on agency quality logo and branding design. BusinessLogos Inc. has teamed up with the GrowAmerica SpringBoard Competition and is awarding all three winners a free design packages! Check out how BusinessLogos and GrowAmerica are busting the recession by rewarding the best business ideas!

What is a great custom logo design really worth? It is hard to say but there are a few things we can say for certain. The logo has historically been called “the face” of the company because it’s usually the first encounter the public has with the company. It’s likeability either loses or gains a company customers, and it does this 24 hours a day for the life of the company. In terms of marketing power, this effect is similar to what financial brokers call “compound interest.” When a customer is considering a company for services of any kind, they usually compare them to one or two other companies – and besides price, the look and feel of the company logo and website design is what they have to use to consider what kind of service they will receive from a company. You make hundreds of decisions based on looks every day. Here’s an example:
The last time you bought an app on your iPhone, you probably typed in the category of app you’re looking for that ill fit your needs. You were then presented with a few options, all represented by a little 57 x 57 pixel graphic square. The meticulous customer checks reviews and reads all the info about the app, but most of us pick the one based on the icon. And when I say most us, I mean, studies show it’s about a great majority of app consumers buy the app based on the graphic.

A well-tailored logo and corporate brand design tells the customer that the company is not a fly-by-night operation and that their service will be fair and consistent. A well-designed logo catches the attention, and is retained in the consumer’s mind.

I really like the name! I usually hate “punny” business names, but this one actually sticks into your memory banks, and works!

Today’s submission comes to us from Dhiraj Chand, and is for a food company that will be at festivals and catering events. The logo will be used for cards, menus, banner, tees, social media and more.

The background gives it an indian feel, but I don’t think it can be used for most media, unless it fades away. I don’t know how the leaf/wisp applies over the i, maybe it works as steam. It needs to be integrated more. The typefaces are too closely kerned, and don’t work well together, because the “curried” font is modern and techy. The tagline and “private parties | festivals…” text are way too small. If this were on a business card, I wouldn’t be able to read them at all. Best to leave the tagline off and use it larger on your website, not as part of your logo.

This is how I would re-work it. I used a warmer, personal font, and made it easier to read. The “away” font is now closer to hand scripted, and I used the S from that font to make a new steam vapor wisp on the I.

Let the logo design experts help transform your business image at BusinessLogos.com.

Reading this awesome strip by Scott Adams reminded me of the many logos we’ve done here at Business Logos that can be flipped upside down. They’re called Ambigrams, and they take a lot of time and creative effort to make them look right.

Here’s some examples of ambigrams we’ve done.

Interested to see how your name or logo would look like this? Contact the logo design experts at BusinessLogos.com.

Logos should ideally be read quickly. Logos ahve a lot of competition with the viewer’s eye, so the name should at least be read within 3 seconds, and give a good impression of the company quickly. Equally important, though, is that they leave an impression. A well-crafted logo with “hidden” elements, like these done by the team at Business Logos, give the A-HA moment that makes people remember that company name, and make the viewer feel involved in the artistic aspect of the design.

For instance: at first glance, the Carrie Smith Design logo looks like a simple S. But once you notice that all the letters are represented, you automatically have a higher likelihood of remembering that logo.