I’m sure you will all agree that the logo design associated with your brand is very important, so here are five great tips to help you maximise your brand and avoid errors of judgement:

1. Design Files
Time and time again when I ask a new client with an existing logo that I need to acquire for use in a design “Do you have your logo design in vector format” the answer is generally “Huh?”

I suspect that most of you not only don’t know what a vector file is, haven’t got one or have lost it. Usually I’m then presented with what you could find, which is often a web quality only JPEG. (These cannot be printed)

Business owners, a vector file type version of your logo is vital, it’s what allows you to change anything about your logo should you require.

This includes it’s tag line or colours or size. Examples being you might need to change the colours from CMYK to Pantone, or that you need it printed large (and in high quality) onto a banner for a trade show.

Without the vector file you cannot do this and a jpeg cannot be converted to a vector …it has to be redrawn from scratch as a vector. (More information about this at www.trulyace.com/scalablegraphics.html)

If searching for your vector file this will be a file type that ends in .ai, .eps, or .psd - if you can’t find it, ask your original designer to provide you with the file and keep it safe and backed up.

2. It Is (or should be) Adaptable
Just because your logo is a specific colour and design, it does not mean that you cannot enjoy some sort of flexibility with your brand. For instance if your logo design is navy blue and you always print it onto white stationery….you can also consider reversing this for some printed items.

Likewise with any graphical icons that represent your company name as part of the logo design, they do not need to be chained to the logo itself….seperate them, play with them….use them in other areas of your printed materials as seperate icons or design embellishes.

For example with regular client desk dry cleaner below, you can see that we have taken the icon from their logo, seperated it, and made it a feature within their flyer design to ’spout about’ (sorry!) their brand ethos to the reader.

3. Who Owns Your Logo? Do You Really Know?
When you commission a designer to create the logo design for your brand it’s crucial that their terms and conditions of the sale of their services include passing on full copyright ownership of the completed (and paid for) design.

Don’t presume that this is the case if it hasn’t been specified to you in writing as part of the project specifics or terms. Designers don’t have to sell copyright to the designs they create even if you have paid for them. You may find that you’re just paying to use the designs rather than actually own them.

Under UK law the copyright of an piece of intellectual work remains with the original artist unless the original artist conveys that copyright to another individual or company.

To do this they simply need to confirm in writing that they are giving you the copyright - this can be in any written format including electronic communications such as email.

This then moves us neatly onto….

4. ‘Protecting Your Copyright’
As mentioned, there isn’t a requirement with UK law to ‘register’ your copyright, however you may want to consider registering a TM for your company, but that’s another topic altogether.

If not trademarked you can if you choose mark your image with a copyright symbol © just to make it clear to others that it isn’t ‘free’ - there is quite a common misconception that images on the Internet are free to use, and not everyone understands that there is rarely such a thing as a ‘free to use’ image, especially for commercial use.

To protect your copyright you need to date evidence your copyright and there is an easy way of evidencing that you are the owner of a particular piece of work, such as a logo or illustration before anyone else was.

Quite simply prepare a digital and paper based image of your design and post it to yourself. Address it to perhaps:

MY LOGO COPYRIGHT
My Fab Business
My Cool Biz Address

When it arrives you will know what it is, and then as the years pass you won’t accidentally open the envelope because you’ve forgotten what it is.

The reason you need to ensure you don’t open the envelope is that the postal item is date stamped by a third party and so goes some way to evidencing the date you became the owner of this design…ie before anyone else who may want to challenge your copy right.

It’s also a good idea to save any research, draft versions and sketches that relate to your brand.

5. Avoiding logo design ’spin’
What is logo design spin? It’s a list of ‘benefits of service’ from logo design providers that contains information that serves to make it seem as though you are receiving more than you really are for your money compared to their competitors.

Logo design spin attempts to make you think “Oh with this company I get xx and xx so I don’t mind paying more”. Here are some spin examples so that you can avoid thinking this uneccesarily to the detriment of your pocket.

- “Unlimited logo design colours”;
I’ve come across this one a few times in the past and thought “Whaat?”
Pleeeassse, it takes about 10 seconds to change colours within logo designs, there should be no price difference between offering a logo design in one colour as opposed to 5 colours, it takes up barely any time at all for a designer to offer five colours over and above one for instance.

- “Your design files sent on a CD”
Ok, this should not be a benefit and feature. It may seem professional to have your files sent to you by CD, but really in todays technical age is it ethical to be chopping down more trees (not to mention the environmental impact of the postal drivers getting the CD to you) for an envelope containing a CD that you could burn yourself from your own machine if the files were sent to you by email only.

In my opinion we should not be sending emission emitting vehicles out with envelopes mades from trees for things that can easily be sent electronically (email) just so we can appear to have an extra benefit or to seem ‘more professional’.

- “10 logo samples/concepts given”
Do they mean 10 completely different concepts? This is just insane, a good designer that has compiled a design brief properly shouldn’t need to design 10 completely different concepts before arriving at the right design for that business. They should easily manage it within 1 - 5 concepts.

If you haven’t arrived at the right concept for that client after 9 attempts and need to show them a staggering 10th design, you aren’t listening to the clients needs and business ‘vision’ properly.

Maybe they mean that you perhaps receive two different concepts for the brand and then for each of those ideas you get 5 slightly different variations?

When you see multiple concept offerings like this I would personally ask to see a sample of ten concepts provided for a business to see how different each idea is.

Here are some of my ‘got it right first concept’ client brands. For most design projects I achieve the right brand within 2 concepts only at a cost saving to the client.

You Might Find Interesting:
Pantone or CMYK Printing
Fossil Brand Evolves (A getting it right ‘first concept’ brand project)
Maximising Your Logo Design
How To Compile A Logo Design Brief

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 25th, 2007 at 1:27 pm and is filed under Thoughts on Design. 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.