6/21/2010

Creating a Logo

Bear with me as I will try to be coherent...not one of my strongest points... I've decided to divide this into 3 posts.. Today I will cover how you might use a logo and choosing your words.... The second part will be choosing a font and manipulating words and letters... Finally the third post will cover adding artistic elements...

Your logo needs to be simple and flexible.... A design that may be great on a banner might be unreadable on a business card.... So before you start give some thought on how you might use your logo in the future.... If it's just for one use it would be easy but when you think about it everyone needs business cards and if you're going to sell things at all the list of uses grows quickly...

Besides my possible list of uses above you may want an adhesive one to put on your car or a banner for a booth in a quilt or craft show....I really don't think I'll put it on t-shirts but I added it just in case because I think it would make a cool t-shirt... Also now's the time to think about how much information you want to share on your cards, etc. Personally I don't want people to have my home phone or address except on a letterhead. It's expensive to have things reprinted if you make a wrong choice at this point.


This whole subject came about because of a recent email from Cathy Kizerian... She's changing directions in what and how she wanted to sell... Her blog is called "Cathy's Crazy by Design" and she is identified by that but she felt it was too long for a logo or tags etc... I felt she had some options to shorten it and she's working on it now....

She could eliminate "Cathy" and focus on "Crazy by Design" or focus on "Cathy's Crazy" and minimize "by design" which I think she is doing... Below is examples of what I sent her as options. Please be forgiving as these are just rough sketches. These all use the same words but size and placement can make a big difference...


It's best if you can just focus on one or two words... If you are just using your name that's great. But if you already have a longer blog or business name you need to find one or two words to focus on... You can have other words but they must be mimimized in the overall design... As examples I pulled some names of blog that I visit often and chose one or two words of each to focus on... They all are several words long... Again forgive the rough sketches but if I were to begin designing a logo for these people, this is where I would begin.....by picking the words to focus on....
Next time I will address how to find a font you like and how to manipulate words and letters into a logo...
And I hope this makes sense... And if you're one of the people who weren't interested in this tutorial.... come back next week...


6 comments:

Carol- Beads and Birds said...

Thanks Gerry
I'll be looking forward to Part II.
Carol

Jo in NZ said...

oh, do mine, do, mine, do mine!!! Only cos it is so looonnnggg,I am interested to see what you would do

Ati said...

OOOhh, I love my Logo! :-))
Thank you so much for your creative mind. I can see it for me on little cards :)

Anonymous said...

I can't wait to see the next parts. I have been doing business cards and logos for friends and family for years and I always look forward to learning more. So glad you are doing this. These are wonderful! Suzie in Idaho

Cathy said...

I really appreciate the thoughts behind your examples, because it helps me recognize the need for a flexible design, yet one that's instantly recognizable. And since I was long ago beaten at the "crazy by design" name online (in about every venue except Ebay), focusing on the facts ("Cathy's Crazy") seems the, uh, sane way to go, LOL!! Looking forward to your next posts! Hugs, Cathy

Susan Elliott said...

Your logo layouts look GREAT!

I wish I could figure out a way to visually get across the concept of Plays...

It was really fun to see all of those ideas drawn out...what a whizbang you are!!

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