Logos in Web Design
by Mike Hallaron,
MH1 Web Design
The ubiquitous company logo is a sticky subject for many companies, but I hope to simplify the issue. As a young advertising salesman in the 1980s, I was taught that when designing an advertisement layout, forget the logo unless your company is Coca Cola or McDonald’s. In other words, only use a logo if it’s instantly recognizable across corporate America. Well that advice was misleading and a dramatic overstatement. While it is true that smaller companies logos are not as well-known, it is more important in the web design world of the new millennia than the newspaper/magazine ad world of the 1980s. Your Web site probably needs a logo. The trick is in the design and usage.
Designing a company logo is best left to a professional designer. Too many small business owners attempt it themselves with disastrous results. A professional graphic designer or Web designer will have the proper software, knowledge of marketing and design techniques as well as technical proficiency with print and Web file formats, not to mention artistic talent. Logo design and in a broader sense graphic design often suffers the same fate as people who think they have a lovely singing voice after two glasses of wine in a Karaoke bar. If you know you can’t sing – don’t. The same is true for creating your own logo. Your business is serious. Invest some dollars in your logo design. Unlike the logo advice I received over two decades ago, a recognizable logo is important in identifying your company and your Web site.. even for small and mid-sized companies.
Veteran British Web design guru Paul Hoskins offers these guidelines about creating a company logo:
- Make sure your logo works offline in print media as well as online. Your designer should use a vector art program such as Adobe Illustrator so the logo can be optimized properly for print as well as Web media.
- Avoid special effects such as drop shadows and beveling. These make your logo look outdated and amateurish. They can also wreck your logo when used against different contrasting backgrounds and colors.
- Stick with a clear, clean design, avoid being too clever. Most people will not get it. Use only two to four colors and experiment with you logo on white and black backgrounds. Tell your designer you want to see it both ways.
- Show the design to friends and colleagues and get their opinions. But remember, their comments are only opinions. Feedback is important.
Designing a logo for the Web
The Internet relies on much smaller, simpler versions of image files including logos. Images are composed for color computer monitors and optimized as jpeg, gif or png files. These files are much smaller with far less resolution than their print-bound counterparts. Your designer should build your original logo files using high resolution, large file size vector art software. The final “print” format may be a TIFF. These large print files can be scaled down in Adobe Photoshop for manageable use on the Web. Photoshop converts the large TIFF file into a smaller Web-friendly jpeg or gif. When the design job is finished, you should receive a CD of various versions of your final logo for print and Web use.
When designing your Web site, it’s best to place your logo in the upper left. Statistics show that 85% of Web sites do the same, so visitors are accustomed to seeing the company brand here and identifying pages within your Web site the same way. Make sure to keep your logo in place within your masthead or header on every page. It does not need to be very large – certainly no more than 100 pixels high. Site visitors do not spend time studying or even considering your logo. They are too busy looking for relevant content.
Don’t forget that many companies use only type or words in their logos, too. The Nike swoosh or other artistic shapes and images don’t always work for every company. Dell Computer is a great example of a company logo that only uses letters. Of course the font, color and other typography attributes are standardized so the logo always appears the same. Uniformity is the key.
Follow these basic logo guidelines and your Web site will look more professional. And your online and print marketing efforts will match giving your company a polished appearance.
Some notable examples
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