Getting started on your new logo.
An action list of pre-project questions & things to think about.
 Before contracting a logo design firm to create your new corporate image, clients should have an idea of the image they want to portray. Funky. Cutting edge, Conservative. The 'buzz' words of business. You should think about whether you want an Illustrative logo (a logo that includes an illustrative representation of what your company does), an Iconic logo (a logo that includes a graphic - or abstract - representation of what your company does), a Text (font) Based logo (a dynamic type treatment that is unique to your company), a Graphical logo or a combination of all three. See here for types of logos and pros and each. You should also consider the future usage of your logo as this can determine the technical set up of your design and might pose some design limitations. You should also be aware of some of the technical restrictions of certain logotypes. You should also consider colour choices - whether you utilize a two spot colour, or four colour process design will greatly impact any reproduction rates in the future. While not critical in the initial design phases, your choice of corporate colour will have a ripple effect throughout ALL your corporate 'look-and-feel' material and is a decision that should not be taken lightly in the final stages of the design process. Once again, your designer can advise you on the ways to maximize your reproduction possibilities while maintaining your logo dynamics.
Getting started - the basics.
While designing a logo is often touted by other design websites as being 'easy', 'fun' or 'simple' there are a series of things that you'll need to think about when it comes to developing your new company identity. To assist you, we've developed a pre-design 'action list' - a series of questions that you can ask yourself which will help develop an effective client brief - essential when communicating with a designer.
Logo name.
This should be the easiest part, but there are still some serious to think about. Do you want to use your full company name in your logo? For example - the full name of our studio is The Logo Factory Inc. but we never use the 'inc.' portion in our display design. Another example - we recently designed a logo for The Olde Mill Cabinetry Company - they could have chosen to call themselves Olde Mill, but it was decided to keep the Cabinetry portion of the company name intact. As the company is relatively new, it was a good idea to tell potential customers exactly what it was that the company did. No doubt the Cabinetry Company portion will be dropped later, but until the
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