Are you an individual or small business that knows you need some sort of logo to help identify you from competitors? Do you have no idea what you want in a logo, making it hard to talk to a graphic designer? Below are some quick tips to help articulate ideas to shorten the design process and potentially saving you some money.

1. Look at the logos of other businesses in your industry. Do your competitors use solid, conservative images, or flashy graphics and type? Think about ways you want to differentiate your logo from your competition.
2. Make a list of your values and circle the top three. Values are what appeal to your target market and are true to you as business. These things are so important that they become rules to guide your company. Values are who you want to be and how you get there. They are your culture.
3. Make a list of brand attributes (metaphors, descriptive words and symbols) and circle the top three. The brand attributes are personality traits that reflect the idea that businesses can be viewed in much the same way that people are. We react emotionally to all our interactions with them. It’s important to ensure that these interactions are consistently on target with just the right business feel and tone of voice.
4. Now that you have a list of values and attributes, what images, symbols, or colors come to mind when you think of them? Make a list of them.
5. Round up a group of other people in your network. Share your values, attributes, images, symbols, etc. to get feedback. Often, you are too close to your ideas. Your network can see your business as a consumer/client and give you valuable information. They may come up with ideas you haven’t thought about. Be sure to write down all ideas, no matter how outrageous.
6. Your logo should be clean and functional. Your logo should work well on a business card or a billboard. A good logo should be easy to reproduce. Icons are better than photographs since they can be deciphered when scaled small. If you include too much detail, think about what it will look like scaled really small or on a fax.
7. Using all the information you have gathered, sketch out some ideas on paper. Logos can be one of three types: font-based, consisting primarily of a type treatment; an illustrated logo that literally illustrates what your company does, such as when a house-painting company uses an illustration of a brush in its logo; or an abstract graphic symbol, such as Nike’s swoosh, that becomes linked to a company’s brand. You don’t have to be an artist. If your shape doesn’t look quite like it should, make a note of what it should be. The point is to get a rough idea to share with a designer.
8. Explore your colors. One thing you need to be careful of as you explore your color options is cost. A five-color logo might look gorgeous, but the price won’t be so attractive when you put it on stationary. Try not to exceed three colors unless you deem it absolutely necessary.
9. Take your rough sketches and ideas to a graphic designer. A graphic designer can take your ideas and give them some finesse, as well as make them digital. Since you have done your homework, you cut down on the amount of time a designer has to brainstorm with you, which could potentially save time and money.
10. Next steps. Shop around for a graphic designer. If the price seems high, look at it this way—remember that a good logo should last at least 10 years. If you look at the amortization of that cost over a 10-year period, it doesn’t seem so bad. Sure, you can find a cheap designer, but you often get what you pay for. Be sure to get several versions of your new logo. At a minimum, you should request a color version, a black & white version and a reversed version. Depending on your design, you might also want both a horizontal and vertical version. Insist on getting vector versions of your logo (.eps) with the fonts converted to outlines. You don’t’ need to know what that means and  you might not even be able to open the file, but it’s extremely important. You need to safeguard these files as any other business asset. Any time you work with a print company, print designer, web designer, etc. be sure to give them these files. They will love you! Have your logo designer also give you JPG or PNG versions of each version of your logo so you  can use it in email, Word docs, etc.

With a well-designed logo, potential clients can instantly discover how your business can serve them.

1. Use Low Resolution Images: For print, you are probably used to 300 DPI or higher. For the Web, we can get away with lower quality work, 72 DPI is just fine. 300 DPI images wouldn’t add much, and would take much longer to download.

2. Be Flexible: When you print something, it should come out just the way you expected. On the Web, different browsers, different computer monitors, and different operating systems will mean that there will be slight variations between how your piece looks on each computer. These can include minor changes in fonts, minor changes in color, and even minor layout changes. There are techniques your HTML producer can use to minimze these issues, but it will never be 100% the same in every environment.

3. Use RGB, Not CMYK. All color on the Web is constructed using RGB. Make sure when selecting a color in Photoshop, that you do so using RGB.

4. The Web is not a print piece: In addition to mostly mechanical differences between Web and Print, it is also important to know people use the Web differently than they may use your print piece. Consider a postcard: It appears in the mail – it has two sides – and a potential “user” of your postcard will spend a specific amount of time looking at it and also will scan in it a specific way. A user of your Web site will be at a desk, using a mouse, and will be at a different point in their day. It may help t put yourself in the mind of a potential Web user and consider how long they might view your piece and what they may look for.

As always, please add your thoughts below!

1. Know your Target Screen Resolution: In print, you need to know how long and wide a piece will be. On the web, that length and width is measured in pixels. For mass market Web sites, you should target your site to be no longer than 775 pixels across. The actual resolution is 800 pixels across, but we need to leave room for the browser window border and the scrollbar which may be on the right side. For Web sites targeted at a younger or more technical audience, you may be able to design for a high screen resolution — plan for 1000 pixels in this case. In any case, be prepared for your site to look different depending on the screen resolution settings on the user’s computer: some computers will show your Web site very small, on others it will take up the full screen. Vertically, there is no maximum length, but note that the user may need to vertically scroll to see your entire page.

2. Are you fluid? Sites like Amazon.com can fill up the browser window — try loading the front page and resizing your Browser Window. Witness how it distributes the extra space that appears when you resize the window. This is called a Fluid design. You can ask your HTML producer to do this, you just need to specify where the extra space should go.

3. Use Text When Possible: On the Web, there are two different types of text: text that is an unusual font and actually stored as a graphic, and text that uses an ordinary font that is stored as text.  Text loads faster, but can vary somewhat from computer to computer. A graphic loads the same everywhere, but loads slower and can’t be read by a search engine. Text that is stored as text can only be one of 6 very ordinary fonts and can be edited easily, text as a graphic can be any font you wish to use, but is harder to make changes to. Our advice is to use text as much as possible, but use graphics when you need to — this means that body text and navigation elements should usually be kept to one of the 6 fonts that are on most people’s computers: Arial, Courier New, Georgia,Times New Roman, Verdana, Trebuchet MS.

4. Hire someone to help with HTML production: as a print graphic designer, we would recommend you have someone else help with the technical work (we, of course, think you should hire us, but any Web programmer will do). The skills that make you a great graphic designer will make the technical work involved with producing Web sites harder. It is a classic left brain / right brain issue — very creative folks will have a hard time with technical work, and vice versa.

That’s it from us, we welcome your input below.