A question from a reader this week prompts today’s tip.

Beth’s son is designing her logo and she was wondering, primarily, if he should create her logo in a software program (like Illustrator or PhotoShop) or simply draw it and scan it in.

I advised her that, because she’s going to be using her logo in a variety of places anyway — almost all of them online or in some other electronic media — that it would be best just to design it from the get-go in some kind of software drawing or photo program.

And that question reminded me that when it comes to designing a logo for your business you really need to also think about all the various ways — and places — you intend to use it.

You’ll want to make sure that it will work successfully — that means that it will be readable and identifiable — no matter where you put it.

At a minimum your logo will be used on your business card and on your website. In reality, it’ll probably be used in lots of other ways and places, too.

Some that come immediately to mind are: brochures, blogs, newsletters and ezines, newspaper and magazine ads and articles, car signs, t-shirts, coffee mugs, and maybe even on billboards. Plus, it will likely be used in very tiny spaces such as on advertising specialty items like pens, key chains, and magnets. You’ll know best where you intend to use it.

Full-Color or black and white?

Color printing has gotten so affordable these days that there’s no good reason anymore to have a black and white, or just a two-color, logo. BUT, there are many times you might need to reproduce your colorful logo in black and white — like in a newspaper ad or a directory listing and on advertising specialty items — so you need to make sure that your logo will also reproduce well when you can’t use color.

In addition, you’ll want to have your logo available in a variety of file formats for the various instances you’ll be needing to use it or to provide to vendors like a printing company for reproduction. So you’ll want to be sure you have your logo as a .jpg, an .eps, and a .png at a minimum. You’ll also need at least one version with a transparent background. Having a transparent background will save you lots of headaches down the road.

The bottom line is that just as you would when planning other scenarios for your business you’ll be better served by your logo if you think about and plan for all the many places where it is going to show up and how you intend to use it.

Your logo is an integral part of your brand, make sure you give it the respect it deserves.

Now, you might be expecting me to be pushing my graphic design services here to ask you to let me design your logo, but you’ll never hear me asking anyone if I can do their logo. Logo design is very difficult and time consuming for me, and it takes special skills and talent to design good ones. In fact, I tell people who do ask that they don’t have enough money to get me to design a logo. Having said that, however, I do enjoy creating the logos for my own business enterprises, but that’s an entirely different circumstance altogether.

But, if it’s time for you to finally get a logo for your business or if yours is old and tired and needing a facelift, you can’t beat the fine work done by the folks at LogoCare.com. They specialize in logo creation so they can do it fast and cheap. Logos used to cost into the thousands of dollars to create, these days you can get a great logo done in just three or four days for less than 300 bucks.

Probably the biggest advantage — in my book anyway — in having a logo designed by a company like LogoCare is that they can provide your logo in all the different file formats you could ever need — including transparent background and black and white versions.

Now, on the other hand, if you’re in need of a great looking — and affordable — newsletter, brochure, postcard mailer, bookmark, business card or custom post-it note or greeting card — with that nice new logo on it — then I’m more than happy to help you create any or all of those. Send an email at the Contact page to learn more.

What would you like to do next?

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010 at 11:00 pm and is filed under Business Planning, Marketing Planning. 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.