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You Logo Should Help—Not Hinder—Sales.
Make Sure It’s A Look that Stands Out
Directing your designers so you get what you need for all the rest of your marketing and creative projects. Even if it’s your neighbor down the street who’s giving you a hand or Leo Burnett, there’s a simple process to follow. Here’s mine.
Strategy
Create a visual symbol for your company that helps your customers remember you and turn your prospect’s heads.
Assignments
Marketing Team/Graphic Designer:Creates a series of logos using only the company name and a variety of fonts. In the first round of edits, logos should be presented to you in black and white only. If necessary, the second round should introduce graphic elements such as lines, swooshes, and circles. If there is a particular icon that can be created that represents your business, like BestBuy’s pricetag, it can be introduced in the third stage. The final stage is for the introduction of color, which will be presented in Pantone Matching System (PMS) color chips (just like the paint store).
The final logo should be made available to you in the following formats:
Grayscale, black & white, and full-color: .jpg, .png, .gif, .tif as well as .ai (Adobe Illustrator for the Macintosh, the printing industry’s standard format).
You:Provide feedback at each stage.
Coaching Points
- Your logo should be a shorthand visual for your company. You can spend a lot of money and invest a lot of time in logo design, so let your budget dictate.
- Clear direction and timely feedback will make all the difference in the world.
- Generally speaking, tag lines are added at a later stage, unless you have already been successfully using one prior to the logo development.
- Plan on at least one month elapsed time for the entire process.
- Try to keep your logo to two colors, if possible. This will save you money in the long run.
Costs
- Besides your time and agency time, you can expect to spend $400–$4,000 depending upon number of edit rounds, designer sophistication, and level of detail.
