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.

Patricia sent us her logo to be critiqued. The company is Apparel US and, surprisingly, she is not a designer. It looks like a designer made this, because there’s a measure of restraint. Everything has a purpose. The stars are there to reflect the United States aspect. The colors are simple. If it weren’t for the gradient on the tag, I would say it’s a 2-color job (that doesn’t look like a halftone, it looks like a third color.

One thing makes me grit my teeth a little. Look at the space between the APP and the AREL. If you give it just that extra 10% that designers do before finishing a logo, then you catch things like this.

Other than that, you made a good looking, simple logo design. Good job.

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.

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.

Dylan O’Donnell is a designer that sent us this logo to critique.

Company Info: DNA Digital is a hosting company, web devs, design and marketing. Want to avoid typical web cliches but have a strong “corporate” umbrella logo to cover many “digital” operations.

What will the logo be used for: Everything. Business cards, websites and hopefully my personal Jet. *cough*. Must work on all colours / reversed.

Joyce, a nondesigner, sent us this in for our review. What does everyone think?