Like anything else, proper logo design has its rules. To avoid trials and tribulation, there are certain well known guidelines that govern the way each and every new logo should come about into existence. These range from the birth of the logo, the creative process, and end at end, when the logo is finally revealed to the world.
Such rules include scalability – paying equal attention to how the mark will look both on giant billboards as well as small business cards – and to make the logo instantly recognizable, to achieve a quick association between product and producer.
Though as the saying goes, rules are meant to be broken. Some rules exist only in history as a memory of technological limitations, while others were conceived as a misunderstanding of the design process, and should have quickly been aborted.
Limited Color:
An excellent example of this is the old ‘no more than X amount of colors’ rule. It started as no more than 2, then 3, then 3-4, and lives on still.
While of course a beautiful logo can still be made with no more than 3 colors, there is absolutely no reason today why you should forbid yourself from experimenting with a larger range.
This limited color rule was originally born in reaction to simple technological constraints. Using a larger amount of colors for a particular logo increased costs to an undesirable amount. Nowadays, as technology advances at increasingly faster rates, the cost of printing many colors in relation to logos is not something that should deter you from creating a wonderfully colourful mark.
One thing that should be kept in mind is to always make sure the logo works well in plain black and white. The logo might appear on faxed documents, low cost reports and other printing, office stationary, etc., and thus will have to retain its original feel even when in a monotone setting.
Having a colorful logo can be fantastic, though color should always be the special sauce to an original black and white mark. Content and form should always be more important than color, and thus shouldn’t be relied upon for color to do so.
Here’s some example of practical colorful logos:
No Special Effects:
Like the limited color rule, the ‘no special effects’ rule exists because of it was harder to print in the earlier days, as well as its contrary nature to the black and white rule.
Though as colors should be used to spice up a fantastic initial design, special effects such as gradients and drop shadows can be used to give added depth and movement to a logo.
As the Web 2.0 revolution appeared, gloss, shine, bright gradations and reflections ruled many newly appearing logos. It wasn’t uncommon for a client to ask for a ‘web 2.0’ styled logo, which actually had no definition, but was taken to mean these certain elements. While the over abundance of these types of logos has made the extremely shiny look a little stale, special effects can be used in a more subtle fashion to make a logo really ‘pop’.
Nowadays, it’s not uncommon to see many companies redesigning their logos by updating them with special effects once considered off-limits, but now serve to ‘modernize’ their identity.
Here’s some examples of how special effects have been used to ‘spice up’ different logos:
Connection between logo and what it represents:
This is a rule perpetuated largely by the amateur and non-observant designer. The idea is that a logo should visually represent the company or organization’s business that is supplies to customers. That is, if the business sells shoes, it should visually represent something to do with shoes. If the business deals with lamps, there should be a lamp in a logo.
This is absolutely not the case. While visual representation can help if you have a relatively new business, it is made apparent by many of the larger companies that their logos don’t actually hold any reference to their product whatsoever.
In fact, logos such as IBM set the standard for many of today’s technological companies logos. After IBM used stripes, they became quite commonplace in many logos dealing with computers and technology.
You’ll notice that with many of the larger more well established businesses, their logo represents their business, regardless of content; their business doesn’t represent the logo.
Here’s an example of a few of these logos:
Break Convention:
Not so much a rule, but far too often taken to the extreme. Many take uniqueness to the extreme where a logo can start to look cryptic instead of functional. Sometimes ‘unique’ logo concepts can make no sense whatsoever.
It is important to distinguish following trend from following convention. Trend is just that – a gimmick that while once fresh, has become saturated due to ‘me too’ symptom. The visual gimmick becomes social proofed, and others wanting to be a part of the group follow suit.
Convention, on the other hand, exists as a visual description of an entity’s business. For example, many high-end fashion brands are characterized by classy type-only logos. While we have no other clues as to the dealings of the business from the logo, we can usually identify a high-end fashion label from the typeface it chooses to use.
This isn’t an example of following trend, but rather following convention. Each label’s logo has its own unique characteristics, yet they all follow a few simple guidelines, so that we can quickly identify their niche.
It is important to remember that convention exists for the sake of identification, though it does not have to restrict creativity and uniqueness.
Here are some logos that remain unique yet still follow convention:
There are many rules that govern the creation of logos. Some as we’ve seen shouldn’t be taken note of, while others act more as guidelines to perfection. However, there are always exceptions to rules – a contradiction in terms – meaning perhaps there are no ‘rules’ whatsoever.
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