How to create a professional logo? advices and examples

Earlier, I have published a basic guide to the creation of a logo, in which I demonstrated the main steps to follow for the graphic designing of a logo. Obviously, it was an article that only touched superficially the argument: creating a professional logo is a complex job that owes its success to hundreds of factors difficult to collect in a single post.

Today I want to start to enlarge that guide by giving some tips which I think might be helpful to you. In order to do that I’ll help myself with an example: today’s client is boss of a vivarium named “Fiore Blu” that has ordered the making of his company logo.

1. Choose a good font

It has happened to me to find captivating fonts from an aesthetic point of view but at the same time of extremely poor quality. In this case, whether you decide the font is worth using and you commit to redraw the letters you need, or you get rid of them and choose something else instead. Under any circumstance never use font graphics of imprecise curves in your projects, pixelled or smeared. Put the zoom to the maximum and analyse gleanings, the graces, and extremities in each letter. Even at a minimum, imperfections are absolutely to be avoided.

An example of an elegant font at first sight but of bad quality? Agate.

2. Play with the character’s spaces

Not necessarily a good logo has to use refined or payment fonts to be considered modern and original: in some cases little is needed to give a familiar font a new and captivating look.

On the other hand, the web is full of typographical layouts that can integrate fonts like Times New Roman or Georgia in a creative way. How? Sometimes you just have to play a little with the character’s spaces, or modify just a few letters, to renew completely the look of a good Helvetica or, in our case, Franklin Gothic.

3. Learn to modify and personalize a font

It’s now a treated and retreated subject that I’ll never have enough of it: a good logo doesn’t necessarily have to be accompanied by a graphical symbol to be considered professional or astonishing. Sometimes it’s just a game of letters, graphically modifying them, to make a functional and creative logo for the company name.

In this example I’ve used a thick font and easily modifying, Bauhaus 93. I’ve arranged that the letters “I” and “B” be united and I’ve modified the g to recall the soft curve of the e. In this way the logo is still readable and acquires its own particularity but still remaining essential and simple.

In this example besides a modification of the character’s spaces both of the name and of the underlying slogan, I’ve modified the B to render the writing more particular. The effect is simple but pleasant and efficient.

4. Stylizing, not clipart

If you want to enrich the logo with a graphical symbol, my advice is: avoid cliparts, drawings, poor quality images. A good solution could be a stylizing graphics, that doesn’t lose in effectiveness on typographical printing and remains limited in colors.

5. …Or a monogram

The monogram is a graphical symbol that can be achieved by superimposing or combining two or more letters, like for example the initials of name and surname or, in the case of a firm, the initials of the trademark. To be clear, the monogram of our client would be composed by the letters “F” and “B”, combined with each other in such a way as to graphically substitute eventual icons or graphical symbols.
Indeed, if in the preceding example we have decided to enrich the “fiore blu” writing with a flower bud, we could even decide to opt for a more abstract graphical embellishment, perhaps recalling our client’s initials.

Normally for a monogram a calligraphic font is used, which traces out the “signature” effect. In this case, I advise you to always recall the entire company name, in a very readable font, in order to make possible that the client can match instinctively the symbol to the company’s name.

Conclusions

In this article I’ve shared with you some tricks and methods to make a good logo. Obviously. a wider study stands behind all this, which ranges from the choosing of colors that best fit the concept,  targets where the firm is oriented to the client needs, that are always different.

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