How important is it for a business to communicate its messages to potential partners and customers? Very. And what graphic communicates a business’s message and uniqueness?….The logo.
Which is what brings me to point some characteristics of badly designed logos not only on websites, but in the overall creation of a business’s identity.
1. Amateurish design
The point is that a professional website should look professional.
These are a few common reasons why many online business logos look amateurish:
- Hiring the wrong professionals. (Printing businesses or web designers are probably not too proficient with logo design)
- *The company outsourced the logo design project using through a competition, which are mainly attended by inexperienced, amateur designers.
2. Companies rely too much on latest trends
Trends (such as glows, bevels swooshes) come and go, eventually they become too BLAH. A logo that is well designed should be evergreen, and should stand the test of time.
Studying how logo designers work is particularly important in giving you inspiration to come up with a unique style of your own.
3. Contain outdated cliparts and stock art
Logos with boring cliparts are usually made by entrepreneurs who create their own logo or inexperienced designers, who are not aware that cliparts are so 90ish and just yuck!
A logo should be original and unique. Using stock vector images not only looks 90ish but it also may cause you to break rules. Chances are, those vector images have already been used by many people around the world.
4. The logo fails to match the website main subject
Ask yourself if this policy is really appropriate for your website? For example, stylish font may not be appropriate for the website of a lawyer office, duh!
Some professional designers also made the mistake of adding a “signature” in their work. Incorporating too much personality in a logo can be very bad. Stay focused and stick to the website’s main topic.
5. Too complex
Very detailed design won’t scale nicely when displayed or printed in small sizes. KEEP IT SIMPLE! Thumbnails are like fingerprints. You will notice the fine details of your fingerprints by looking at them closely. The same goes for logo design.
A detailed logo carries more information and web visitors need to know. Which may cause them to have the need to stare at it longer rather than continuing to browse the site.
6. Poor selection of fonts
When designing a logo, you should choose a font that best matches your website topic. Often, a logo fails completely, because it has wrong fonts (for example, the infamous Comic Sans is used much too often on many websites).
So much of design is based on knowing typography and having the knowledge to make the right choices when it comes to fonts.
Poor selection of font happens because the decision-making process is not taken seriously enough. Many designers choose a font without giving it a second thought.
7. Uses too many fonts
You shouldn’t incorporate too much elements in your logo, it’s confusing…… enough said.
8. Modified from an existing logo
This could be the biggest mistake in logo design. Some designers find no harm in taking a logo from somewhere else and simply modifying it, NO NO NO! That is stealing! A logo should be utterly unqiue and your own!
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