Nonprofit’s love designing and redesigning their logos. Logos provide us with a sense of legitimacy. They give us an identity.
Asking these three questions while you’re designing your logo will save you alot of time and money later.
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Will it work in 1-color?
Graphic designers are great. They are creative and know how to make our world look beautiful. But in my experience, most think only in 4-color images. The truth is, your nonprofit isn’t always going to want to pay for 4-color printing for every single appeal, business envelope, or reply card.
So make sure your logo options look good in one color. Using different tones can be a great way for a 2-color or 1-color logo to look more professional.
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Will it be identifiable reduced to a 32 pixel x 32 pixel square?
Since so much of our work is happening online, our logos need to be identifiable in big pictures, and in little ones. Facebook will reduce your page’s image to 32×32 in the newsfeed. So make sure people will be able to easily make sense of it!
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Will it be easy to embroider on clothing?
Another thing I’ve seen graphic designers love is colors that fade out or fade into another color. These do look really nice on paper. But they can be an amazing pain if you’re going to ever try to embroider the logo on polo shirts or on hand bags.
So take the image to your local embroidery/screen printing shop and ask.
These are three common problems I’ve run into. What would you add?
Great post, Marc. Marks and logos are one of the leading ways that nonprofits can make themselves memorable.
From my experience, another key tip is making sure your designer provides you with scaleable logo formats like an EPS file. Nonprofits are often working on a shoestring design budget, which sometimes leads them to work with less experienced designers. Make sure you get a selection of files that can be re-sized and re-colored for different situations.
Lisa,
GREAT point! I can’t tell you how many times I have asked nonprofits for images and gotten words on a “word docs”!
Related to your point #2, I was recently reminded about the importance of ensuring that logos are square enough to be scalable to various sizes. If your logo is too long, it might not be versatile in different print layouts and different online applications. The solution: during the design stage, ask your designer to provide you with multiple versions of your logo: horizontal, vertical, stacked. Having these approved variations of your logo will help prevent it from being ‘messed with’ down the road. 🙂
That is great advice. That way you can have your logo professionally fitted for multiple formats but still be identifiable as “you”!
Great post Marc! and very important. As a designer, the first thing the client will see is their logo in black only. If the logo works as black and white only, I am about 95% done. Too many designers use too many colours OR if they are designing a two colour logo even, use colours that are too gray – drives me crazy. I wrote a post a while back about my process and why your logo should never, ever, like, EVER cost $25… http://agentsofgood.org/2010/09/why-logos-cost-more-than-25/ Cheers Mark!
Awesome reply. Thanks John!
You get what you pay for, huh? 🙂
Great post, Marc! And, what John said. When hiring a designer, ask them what their process is. If they don’t tell you they first design in black only, that’s a big warning flag. And it must be scalable from favicons to billboards. That means vector format. Always.
Thanks Taughnee! Favicons are so important! Thanks for mentioning them too!
In regards to point #1 & #3, a quality designer does not think in 4 color and will not use fades or gradients to change something. A great graphic designer will have thought of everything before hand, even how pieces will be used. People often forget a designer is not just someone who sits at a computer. A designer is a researcher and problem solver.
Taughnee, Favicons are a thing of the past. Internet Explorer and Chrome no longer support those. It is too easy to make a favicon look like a secure website favicon.
Thanks for the comments, Zach.
As for the favicon, I’m not seeing what you’re seeing. Chrome on my MacBook Air still supports favicons. And they’re still pretty important helping tabs stick out for branding purposes. Right across the top of my browser now the favicons are: Gmail, my bowtie, LinkedIn’s, YouTube’s, Google Calendar’s, Google searches, Facebook’s, and HootSuite’s.
All those companies seem to like having identifiable favicons.