Don't let time constraints, lack of skills or a creative block hamper your ability to design a logo. The professional design process entails brainstorming, sketching ideas and transferring promising concepts into a vector-based design program for rendering. However, the recommended path for the non-designer encompasses the use of clip art typefaces, clip art disks or online services. Whether designing for a large corporation or for personal use, an understanding of basic design principles, such as circles, squares, lines, contrast, alignment, fonts, and color, determines the failure or success of a logo.

Concept

Visualize the message behind the logo, whether a pizzeria at the beach, or supermarket in the desert. For inspiration, make a list of imagery words, such as sun, sand, beach grass, pepperoni, pizza slices or cactus. Combine your imagery words to create a visual concept. For example, a pizza slice and beach grass. Not an ideal food, but a great image for a logo. Picture the "Beach Pizza" concept as white circles (pepperoni) punched out of black, slightly rotated triangle (pizza slice); add extend tapered lines (blades of grass), in various shades of gray, slightly higher than the triangle; an achievable design when using clip art. The perfect logo design rarely uses unaltered clip art. Consider combining two individual pieces of clip art or manipulating the image, by flipping, skewing, stretching, resizing or cropping. While resizing maintains the original dimensions, stretching and skewing changes the appearance.

Development

Type and image work together to unify a logo design, therefore, put the same effort into your font choice as with your image development. The choice of font (typeface) communicates a message through font size, alignment and color. Add interest by selecting dissimilar fonts or try typefaces with contrasting sizes, weights and structure, such as a bold, san-serif font with a smaller script font. Text alignment organizes a logo. Place text with your graphic image either flush left (quad left), flush right (quad right), centered or justified (quad left and right). Adjust the line height, word space and letter space for optimal effect. Color is not required for a good logo design, as black-and-white and shades of gray (value) suggest color without actually adding pigment. However, the addition of warm colors, such as reds and oranges, or cool colors, such as blues and greens, generate a mood.

Tips

Warmer colors naturally draw our attention, especially red, while cooler colors require more area. Use a 2-1 proportion when using warm and cool colors in your design. Most standard computer fonts are insufficient for design. For additional clip art and clip art typefaces, visit online sources for purchase or free download. Never combine two different italic fonts, two different script fonts or an italic font with a script font. Never use similar typefaces from the same category. Use of Internet images, without permission, is considered copyright infringement.

Source:

University of Wisconsin: Graphic Standards for Consistent Logo Use

Iona: Graphic Design Style Guide, College Communications

University of the Incarnate Word: Graphic and Web Style Guide

More Information:

San Diego State University: Graphic Design Basics

Sessions: Photoshop Basics