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Design of logos and house-styles

| logos and design - important guidelines to preserve the authentic character

Branding and core element >> the logo stands for the firm as such and is as such related to the company in the eye of the public. The design should breathe the industry it is in and reflect the taste and expectations of the target group. It should generate trust and communicate stability and endurance. A perfect logo lets clients associate with it and therefore with the firm. Additionally it should have unique identifying elements and be designed for a long term usage. However it takes more than simply a good logo to achieve branding in a broad sense.


Test the design of the logo on the message it communicates to the target group. Having a logo that is sorted by 80 people to a toy shop, when only 100 are interviewed, but the firm is active in Content Syndication, then this would be stated as a negative test result. To change a logo that is even in such a bad shape needs a sensible approach because a logo is not something you can just dump without any consequences.

I really do not like my logo

We are approached many times by people that do not like their logo at all. They bought a real cheap logo to start with and did not recognize then the important contribution it has to their business. Or they have an own story related in their memory to the logo which is not perceived by their clients at all and therefore does not have the desired impact. A logo is like a clingy spouse, when established as the symbol for your company, hard to get rid off.

When you have a firm that is already established for more than 2 years, counting a number of steady clients your own, do not change the logo too drastically but always leave the identifying factor untouched so the logo looks rejuvenated or grown up, balanced, stabile and credible but the basic forms should be still there.

When a logo is changed too often the company image is projected as to be fickle and clients might think the business is not very dependable or consider it as financially unstable.

File format of logos and CMYK color mode

All logos designed by Visual Orange are delivered as a vector graphic to make usage for a wide variety of media channels available. Vector graphics can be enlarged without loosing quality and sharpness ...and your needs and the memory of your workstation are the only limits to blow this logo up.

For print you require the file in CMYK to be able to take it to the printer and receive a perfect print result. It is therefore very important to choose a color scheme that is available in offset printing to vibrate the true colors and to achieve consistent print results. These colors are mostly grouped in Custom Color Systems. Ask your printer which one he uses and what the output resolution and other settings should be. There are a whole range used, also depending on your location defines which Custom Color is used most commonly and also your specific target media plays a major role, like print for:
  • continuous stationery
  • or gloss art paper prints
  • natural paper
  • and newsprint.

Custom Color Systems for printing your logo

  • The PANTONE System can render 1114 CMYK colors and is used for spot-color reproduction.
  • The FOCOLTONE System can render 763 CMYK colors.
  • The HKS swatches System, mostly used in Europe has a specified CMYK equivalent.
  • The ANPA-COLOR System mostly used for newspaper applications.
  • The TOYO Color Finder 1050 System used in Japan.
  • TRUMATCH Color System is able to achieve 2000, computer-generated colors. Mostly used in USA.

Insisting on a color scheme that does not fulfill these requirements will produce dissatisfying print results and colors will loose their vibrancy and unique identifying factor when printed. We get confronted with this fact quite frequently when logos are ordered and designed for the web only, as they are cheaper, but when the business takes off and print is more and more required then the limiting borders are reached quickly. Therefore taking good care of your business is mirrored in the care you dedicate to your logo.

Logos and stationery for digital printing

Often Start ups use their own desktop printers to print stationery and calling cards. Files for this purpose are delivered in RGB to be printed straight from your computer. Monitors display the file using light, whereas printers connected to your PC and print images using inks, pigments, or dyes. Calibration of your monitor is required to meet the same result as on the print. You will need to print the file first and then change the settings of your monitor to match the print. Creating a custom profile specifically for your printer and the paper you print on and incorporating the color management into your workflow lets you achieve predictable and consistent results.

When Photoshop format (.psd) is required, it will be delivered in 600 dpi resolution on a transparent background to make the implementation possible on all backgrounds defined in the
>> style guide. The logo will then be delivered in various sizes starting with an A4 format down to the calling card size.

Font

A letter type (font) used for the logo that is copyright protected will require that client will have to purchase the font to not break the copyright law and to own the licence to use this font freely for all marketing needs.

Logos designed for the web

Each monitor has it's own color settings and capacity to display colors. People using old monitors or old graphic cards, will see a totally different logo color scheme than that what you have displayed on your screen. Therefore there is no guarantee that a web site and its images display a consistent color scheme on all monitors. Because of the capacity of the modern monitors to reproduce true colors you can have a brilliancy of colors hard to be authentically rendered in a print which can result in a dissatisfying print result. The low resolution of web logos are also not delivering the quality you need for printing.

On the other hand, due to restriction in size and the 96dpi resolution, logos only designed for print can appear on the web smudgy, blurred and worse, even unreadable to unrecognizable or you have to make it unusual large in size. This can cause complications considering the limited size of a web page. When Visual Orange creates a logo we keep in mind that it will be used in all media.

Workflow of logo design

We present a first draft of 3 logos to determine the direction the client wants to choose. Apply changes as wished to the one he decided to take further. We polish it up and produce the final logo for delivery. When signed off, we will produce the required sizes and client can download the files from our server.