A company must have a professionally designed logo to start building a brand and establishing client loyalty. Logos should follow basic design principles like balance and contrast and still be dynamic, unique, and easily recognizable. Logos can be abstract or concrete and should reflect the company’s business personality or image. For example, a conservative business organization needs a more sedate design whereas a more creative and cutting-edge organization can be more daring with their logo and colors.
When approving your new logo keep a few reproduction considerations in mind. You need a complete logo package to keep branding consistent. For example, logos that reproduce well digitally or photographically don’t always work in other reproduction methods like silk screening or embroidery. Colors are an important aspect of marketing psychology but logos with several unique colors often cost more to produce in certain media. Shape also matters, because a horizontal design fits best in horizontal spaces and vertical ones in tall spaces.
Therefore, when designing or approving a new logo, think about how it will be used, and consider having various approved versions for different techniques and spaces. Brantley routinely provides a complete marketing package with a range of logo versions and color options to fit all scenarios. For example, the logos come in full color, inverse color, all white and all black. Many logos also come in horizontal and more vertical shapes with the elements stacked rather than side by side.
Multiple Colors and PMS Matches
Colors send marketing messages and using multiple colors often grabs an audience’s attention more effectively than single colors. Color formulas as part of the Pantone Matching System (PMS) help a company get uniform results, whether printing business cards or a digital newsletter. Colors are specified through a three- or four-digit number. For example, your logo may use PMS 185 red and PMS 300 blue. The chosen colors should reflect the company’s image and resonate with clients and customers. Marketing gurus have studied how colors influence consumers and artists and designers keep color psychology in mind when creating a new logo.
Fortunately, today’s electronic media, and digital printing allow full and multicolor logos to be reproduced easily. Reproducing colors digitally for a video screen or digital paper printing is easy because the image is produced photographically. You can use as many specific PMS colors as you like. Other printing and surface decorating methods are not as flexible, however, and full color or multiple specific PMS colors can sometimes pose problems or cost more to reproduce in non-digital formats. Therefore, it’s a good idea to have some simpler logo versions to use where they’re needed.
Silk Screening
For example, if you order silkscreened T-shirts for the company picnic, the number of colors and their formulas make a difference. Most silk screeners stock a number of standard ink colors but must custom mix or special-order unusual hues. For example, they may have five different reds, two royal blues, and a navy, but not PMS 185 red or PMS 300 blue. Also, since one color is printed at a time, each additional color costs more. Each will require a screen and application and drying time. While shirts can be digitally printed rather than silkscreened, that often costs more and doesn’t look the same.
Embroidery and Hot Stamping
Embroidery or hot stamping present similar challenges for multiple or unusual colors. Most embroidery machines apply several colors at once, so color quantity is less of an issue, but threads don’t always match PMS colors well, and each shop only stocks so many colors.
Hot stamping, which might be done on a pencil or key tag, is often only available in one or two colors, and hot stamping foil colors are also limited. Because of the challenge of color matching, creating single color, all black, or all white logo versions can be helpful.
Flexibility in Logo Shapes
A much wider than tall (horizontal) logo might be great printed on a pen, but it will not work as well on a vertical surface like a drinking glass. When a space (whether an ad space or for printing on merchandise) is vertical and the logo horizontal, the logo may be too small to make the impact you want. Although vertical logos are rare, they have similar problems with a horizontal space. Don’t try to print it on swag, like pens unless you turn it on its side. Square logos can be more versatile, but as an alternative, some companies choose to have two logo versions. Version one might have a company name, like ABCD Engineering, all in one line whereas version two puts ABCD on line one and Engineering underneath.
Registration – Use Bolder Lines and Spaces
Registration is a term describing either printing fine lines very close together or printing multiple colors accurately so they line up properly in a design. With digital printing, close registration doesn’t matter. If, on the other hand, you plan to have the logo silkscreened, embroidered, hot stamped, or using more traditional printing methods, you need a logo version without registration challenges.
Fine Lines
If fine lines print close to each other, they can bleed together with some printing methods. For example, a logo with three fine lines close together around the company name will be challenging when printed on porous newsprint paper because the ink bleeds together. If a fancy filigree within a letter is too intricate, the same problem can occur with newsprint or hot stamping. It may also be difficult to produce an embroidered logo with these features.
Multiple Colors
Multiple color registration is trickier with some printing types. The closer the registration is, meaning the closer the two colors are in a design, the more difficult lining everything up can be. For example, offset and silk-screening print one color at a time. After the first color is laid down, the next color must be placed accurately so that the different colors in a logo line up properly. A slight shift in one direction or another could mean the second color overlaps the first or prints too far away. With overprinting, you can have an extra color when the two logo colors combine. Staying true to your color scheme matters in branding, so if your red and blue combine to add a purple, that’s not helpful.
Foil stamping can sometimes be done in multiple colors, but not with close registration, so collaterals like logoed plastic cups for the company picnic work better with more open registration or single-color logos.
For these types of logo reproduction, a design with a slight space between colors is more practical than a logo with multiple colors that touch. If your logo does have close multicolor registration, you might also want a single-color version to avoid problems with certain types of printing. If the logo has very fine lines, you might also have the artist create a simpler, bolder version to use in these circumstances.
Your logo, colors, and typestyles will define your company in the marketplace. Therefore, they should reflect the company’s culture and business philosophies. The logo needs to be something that resonates with the company and that the company feels embodies them.
However, whether you hire a designer or create a logo yourself, be practical. Keep your marketing budget and goal of branding consistency in mind. Have several logo versions available to fit different reproduction methods you might employ. Thinking ahead about how you will use your logo will enable you to present a consistent marketing image without breaking the bank.