Designing a Great Blog Logo

The logo is the core aspect of every blog or business, for that matter, that must stand out in order for you to burn an impression in your readers’ and customers’ minds. If you choose to spend less time or money on designing your logo, your entire brand could go up in smoke, eliminating the clear, defined message that you wanted people to receive when they visit your site.

Despite the fact that this blog uses a textual logo based on the pre-existing style of the theme, there are several ways that you can design a great logo, through a few basic steps.

Examples of Logos

Starting with an Idea

Everything you do needs to start with an idea. Think about logos that you have seen in the past from corporations and throughout the web. Right now, you are probably looking at dozens of logos, from the Start Menu/Apple Icon to the browser window, sponsors in the sidebar, your feed reader, and other iconic representations of services and companies that you use every day. Again, you must refine what you want your logo to accomplish. It it doesn’t accomplish anything, it is nothing more than a dull image.

Some other top-notch sources of inspiration can be found at LogoPond, LogoSauce, or Logo Design Blog (corporate examples). Remember that when you look at these logos, you are aiming to replicate design style, not the entire design or every element of the design – you have to create something unique that leaves a lasting impact on the people who see your logo.

The initial stage of the design process is brainstorming and drafting a design that will likely be scrapped, but nonetheless, it may end up in the final design in some way or another, possibly as a smaller element.

What the Logo is Supposed to Do

From Wikipedia – The logo is a graphical element, such as a ideogram, symbol, emblem, icon, or sign, that, together with its logotype (a typeface) forma  trademark, or commercial brand.

When you design a logo, it is intended to be recognized immediately – not almost immediately, or that means that you have failed in your ability to create a logo that sticks. It means that the person thought of another brand before yours. The shapes, fonts, and images have to be different and unique from any other, even in a similar market.

Ask yourself what you want from the logo, with these ideas and questions in mind.

1. Associating an image or style with your name – defining what your blog or business does – will allow you to focus more on smaller factors of the design, such as typeface or colors.
2. What logos are my competitors using and how have they been integrated into their core business? Have they branded with their logo in the site’s/blog’s footer, or is their logo rarely used other than in the logo/header?
3. A logo should be scalable, easy to remember, and be able to display nearly anywhere, meaning that you need to either a) create multiple designs reflective of one central image or b) create a logo that is able to meet all the logo design principles.
4. Think about the message you want to get across – typography, images, and colors are the main ways to get this across.
5. Do you want to include your tagline/slogan in the image, or will you be able to associate it through other parts of your site, i.e. below the logo?
6. Long-term prospects: will the logo be able to evolve over time, or will you have to design a new logo with each major revision of your site/brand?
7. Not all logos will work for your site. You need to be specific in your approach to finding a design that truly stands out, not a mediocre image that says nothing about your brand.
8. Ask others for input. Crowdsourcing may be beneficial in allowing you to get the opinions of your readers – the people who may present additional ideas and valuable feedback for the designs that your set on the table. Now, they might not know what your main goals are with your site/blog, but they sure do know what looks good in respect to a different view.
9. Placement – many sites have their logo placed to the left, due to screen resolution, although you could try placing it directly in the center, as seen on many news sites, or to the right. This can leave a huge impact in how readers perceive your brand.

Don’t make the mistake(s) of: 1) Choosing a bad, unreadable font, 2) a color scheme that doesn’t suit your blog/site, 3) a logo rendered incorrectly, making it appear “bad” in quality, and 4) a logo that replicates another site/company’s logo.

The Next Steps

after you have brainstormed some ideas, it is time to move onto the sketching process, or the drawing process. While not everyone has to go through this step, it is critical if you don’t yet have a solid idea of your logo, as it will enable you to draft and revise several additional examples.

Much like writing a book, you may never be satisfied with the end product, but you will have to eventually settle on a design that is nearly as good as the one that you had envisioned.

Visualize how the logo will look on business cards, on your site, in other formats, then begin implementing it.

At this stage, if you are having someone else design the logo for you, they will present you with some prototypes and final sketches of how the logo will look when complete. It is up to you to agree to or ask for revisions to the logo, if the company allows you to make revisions/multiple versions of the logo. The process would go back to the initial stage again if you don’t like the versions that they have drafted.

Concept: Cheap is Not Better

There are many designers out there that charge under fifty dollars for a logo. While you might be satisfied with the results, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the logo designer put in the most effort to create the logo – there were no revisions, meaning that you were given the result of off-the-top-of-the-head brainstorming. In other words, you didn’t have drafts of multiple brainstorming and additional time spent revising the initial prototypes.

Many logo designs take more than a few hours to complete, two at a bare minimum. As a business, unless they are completing hundreds of logos each day with multiple employees, it will be difficult to survive making <$50 for multiple hours of work (let’s say two, average, per design).

However, this isn’t necessarily the case from all logo designers. Some of the most iconic logos have been contracted by the corporations for very minimal fees – the Nike Swoosh, one of the most famous logos of all time, was created by Carolyn Davidson, who met Phil Knight while she was attending Portland State University. Knight approached Davidson about designing a logo for his company, planning to release a new line of athletic footwear, charging a rate of just $2 per hour. In the ned, through the design options, the total bill was a meager $35.

Why you want to have someone design the logo for you: a) you don’t have the time required to pursue the task, b) you don’t have any clear ideas what you want from your logo, other than the message that you have created for your blog/website/company, c) you don’t have money to shell out for advanced programs such as Photoshop or Illustrator, essential for creating the logo, and d) you don’t have professional experience designing, including the color schemes, typographic elements, etc.

Obviously, the quality is one of the most important factors. So, unless you design the logo yourself, you don’t know the exact amount of time spent in the design process or how many initial revisions took place.

Conclusion

The logo enables you to persuade your customers to keep returning – it is a textual and/or graphical representation of everything that you have and what you’ve created, from the company to customer relationship, the uniqueness your bring, and the core focus of your business. Without logos, all companies would be the same, other than their name and the message that is incurred from hearing it.

Now the next time you design a logo, think about the essential elements that make up a great design, then apply them to create a distinctive loog that provides the true meaning of what your company/blog is all about.