LogoPro Blog - Logo News, Opinions and Discussion
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Friday, April 23, 2010
23 April 2010
Election fever is in the air, we are watching events unfold with great interest. It seems that we are not the only ones, potential clients seem to be holding back on their plans to start a business, or to work on their image and promotion. So as an incentive to clients old and new Logopro are offering a 20% discount on logo design for the next 2 months, offering ending on the 30th June 2010. So if you are thinking about new branding for your business, or perhaps adding another strand to your business, now is the time to take the plunge. Logopro are well know for our inspired logo designs, our friendly and very fast service. Not only that we have been around for a long time, designing logos online since 2001, for businesses around the world. Feel free to talk to one of our logo designers on our freephone number 0800 170 1060
Updating a logo design with LogoPro
Thursday, April 22, 2010
22 April 2010Larrabee Enterprises came to us at the beginning of April for an update to their existing logo design.
Specialising in crust goat & sheep leather, they wanted a more professional look to extend their business into the global market.
When presented with their new logo design our client was impressed enough to allow us to extend our work with a stationary set proudly displaying their new artwork.
Here is what our client had to say:
“Logopro answered my enquiry with speed and friendliness. Our logo designer offered several variations on our old logo. Our final choice is a great improvement and will be an asset to our growing business. Ahmad Shour”
Graphic Design Forum
Thursday, April 08, 2010
We have just discovered a brilliant place for anyone in the creative industry to share ideas, get feedback and get to know one and other!
The forum has a wide range of topics covering all aspects of graphic design from advice on how to deal with new challenges to how to promote and maintain your company website/blog and has been a real help to me and our company!
With one of the most friendly communities on the web today why not come join us?
What is a reasonable amount to spend on logo design?
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
17 MARCH 2010
If you’re thinking about setting up a new business, you will have considered how much you are prepared to invest in your new venture. Hopefully a chunk of that money will go towards creating a professional image for your new business and you will have allocated a reasonable amount of money for this. But what is a reasonable amount to spend on logo design?
There are two options, actually several options if you take into account DIY or letting your nephew design it for you because he likes messing about with Photoshop.
For a professionally designed brand for your business you could approach a design agency you can work with face to face, hugely important to some. If you decide to use an earthbound agency, it will cost considerably more than an online logo design service. A high street design agency will have bigger overheads, with high street rents, receptionists and their own professional image to pay for. Also they have to include the time spent in meetings in their costing, which would require a meeting room/area, designer time and coffee and biscuits – all of these elements require the designer ‘look’.
A viable alternative is an online logo design company. Online logo design companies still have overheads – including staff, dedicated working space, the industry standard software and computers, professional standard internet services, well designed and managed website, search engine optimisation. Where we save is on the designer offices, designer receptionist, designer cups and saucers and designer meetings.
But with so much choice on the web, how on earth do you decide who to go with. With companies offering bespoke logo design for £50 or even £25, why would you choose to go with a company that charges nearly £200 for the same service?
Be realistic, how much time would you expect an experienced logo designer to spend on a logo and how much would expect them to earn per hour. As we work to a fixed priced package, we aim to spend 3 to 4 hours working on the first design concepts, in reality this can often take longer depending on the logo. Also we offer unlimited revisions; the stages of development and refinement are often what turn a good logo design into a great logo design. We use our time efficiently, communicating mainly by email. So in total we aim to spend about 6 hours on a logo design, in practice we spend 8 or 9 hours. It is of paramount importance to us that our clients are totally happy with their final logo design; it is good for them and good for us.
So 6 – 9 hours on a logo design at £200 works out at between £22.00 to £33.00 per hour – not a great rate of pay. There is a huge amount of competition on the internet, so our price has to be competitive. We also look on our logo design package as a loss leader. We offer a money back guarantee to give potential customers confidence to come to us. We can do this is because businesses who have used LogoPro, recognise the high level of expertise and the fast, friendly service we provide and they come back to us for their graphic requirements, year after year.
Large companies spend thousands on their corporate image, but for new, small and medium size businesses £200 seems to be just the right amount to get a good custom logo design for your company.
Business to business networking is a great tool for improving the visability of your company
Friday, June 26, 2009
26 June 2009
The great thing about business networking is that it is a simple and effective way to market your business. Because of the way events are organised it is possible to be relaxed and friendly without feeling you are in a high pressured business situation. You can increase awareness of your company generally, while expanding your network of business contacts and potentially expanding your network of friends. Networking is also a great opportunity to share experience and knowledge with people in a similar situation, without this it is easy to feel unsupported and isolated.
This week I joined in on a business to business networking event here in Wales. The event was held at the National Botanic Gardens of Wales, a beautiful garden set in 500 acres near Carmarthen. Established only 9 years ago the gardens have already manage to achieve an establish feel with inspiring gardens both outside and inside a huge modern green house. The networking event, organised by The Best of Carmarthen, started with a welcome in the Great Glass House, as it was in the evening we had it all to ourselves and could take a walk and enjoy the plants from around the World in several different temperature zones within the dome. We then moved on to Principality House, just next door, where we enjoyed a buffet and refreshments while listening to an interesting talks from two of the Best of group. The first topic was Search Engine Optimisation and how to get the best out of your web site. Angus Findlay of Web Adept covered all aspects of SEO in way that was accessible to a complete novice while passing on advice and tips to people in the same line of work. Juliet Fay, a copywriter, talked to us about how to approach writing to get your business message across. As anybody who writes copy or blogs regularly will know, it can take hours to write an intelligent article that is interesting, original and relevant to anyone out there who cares to read it. After the presentations everyone took the opportunity to talk to each other, pass on knowledge, information, business cards, and as a result many contacts were made that were valuable in several different ways. As a graphic designer and more specifically a logo designer, I met several people in the same business, we all have our different areas of expertise so we exchanged cards and will hopefully be able build on this first meeting and this will be to everyone’s advantage.
Sleek, Modern logo design based on the name of a company specialising in supply and installation of bathrooms, wet rooms and showers
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
19 May 2009
Eastwillow came to Logopro in April. Our client already had a strong idea of the sort of logo design he wanted for his company, nothing to do with bathrooms or showers, just the simple instruction to provide designs based on the name Eastwillow, using blues to symbolise water. In the end they chose the most simple but effective design using a water drop as the ‘o’ in willow.
Eastwillow is a good example of how a simple idea, probably used many times over in various guises, can still give a very strong brand to a company. There are so many elements a logo designer must consider when designing a new logo, to break it down to 4 parts, it is font, colour, symbol if required, composition. So even when a client thinks we have come up with ‘the’ design for them, we can still WOW them by showing more variations using different fonts and colours which can completely change the feel of a logo design. It always gives our logo creators a buzz if we can surprise a client at the late stage in the logo design process.
Logopro recently finished a new logo design for established holiday cottage web site based in west wales
Thursday, May 07, 2009
7 may 2009
West Wales Holiday Cottages came to our online logo design service for a new logo for their thriving holiday cottage web site.
The brief our client provided was concise :
‘We would like a logo which consists of a graphic which does not incorporate our name and can used independently of the name. This is for two reasons: one, because the name is so long and two, because although we currently operate only in West Wales we may expand into other areas.
Style and Design
Simple and clean design possibly reflecting a cottage in a coastal (and hilly) landscape. The style we have in mind is the hill logo, which I will email separately, but more compact and without our name.
Colours
Maybe Greens, Blues, Yellows. Probably the types of greens and blues that we use on our homepage.
Typeface
We would suggest a sans-serif font to go with the logo; a typeface which isn’t too hi-tech but one which would reflect the fact that we are a modern, internet based company.’
It is always very interesting to read the brief retrospectively, once a logo designer gets to work on a new job, a key part of the job is to think freely, to try and see the business from various perspectives. We offered several logo designs, some of which included traditional Welsh cottages illustrated in different ways and some designs that included hills, sea and sky. Our client had a strong vision of what they wanted and our logo designers work hard to bring that vision to reality and WWHC are now very happy with their new logo.
news of a recently completed logo design for an IT Consultancy, a company who suggested the idea of a jigsaw
Friday, April 24, 2009
24 April 2009
In March The Integration Team came to us to design their new logo. They are specialist IT experts who take software and produce highly automated installations of complete systems and then provide support for them. So it’s both consultancy and coding.
They liked the idea of a logo design that was ‘slightly 3d’and pointed us to several logos they liked in our online portfolio.
We presented our client with 6 different rough designs, they particularly liked 2 of the logo designs so we developed both at the next stage. It helped them decide which concept to go for and we worked together showing different colour combinations, different fonts and layouts until our client was completely happy with the final design.
Our logo designer came up with a design that included pieces from a jigsaw, people working together, i and t in the image. This completely sums up the core of The Integration Team’s business.
I guess that’s why they call it the blues – blues are really popular in logo design
Tuesday, April 07, 2009
7 April 2009
The most popular colour in logo design is blue. When our logo designers begin a new project, we work on six bespoke logos, we work hard to see all the possible ways we can approach a particular business. Once a client has chosen a favourite design, we then develop it further taking their comments and keeping an open mind on ways to improve the logo further. Around this stage of the project we start experimenting with different fonts and colour combinations on the chosen logo design. We know from all our years in the business that when we offer different colour-ways, eight out of ten clients will choose the blues option.
Blue logo designs you may be familiar with are:
Ford, white script on blue oval, designed in 1928, it has changed little over the years. In 2003, to celebrate 100 years, Ford released a logo that they named Centennial Blue Oval, which is a graduated fill from dark blue up to light blue.
BARCLYS they used to have a logo with white text and an eagle reversed out of a blue, solid and dependable. Since 2008 they have a new identity, a hollowed out globe designed by Brand Union, for an eye watering 600 thousand pounds!
More contemporary logo design is the GAP logo, white text reversed out of a blue square. The name comes from the phrase ‘generation gap’.
Also bmi airline uses lowercase letters in blue. British Midland Airways launched its new identity in 2001.
The COOP supermarket also use either blue letters on white or white on blue, redesign in 1993, the ‘cloverleaf’ brand conveys the Co-op’s origins where several independent companies came together to form one organisation with shared principles.
AOL have blue capital letters with a triangle and circular icon in blue. AOL have the dubious honour or being rated the worst and the best internet providers by Watchdog, a BBC programme reporting on consumer affairs in the UK. At it’s most popular this internet service provider had 30 million members, so the AOL brand must be one of the best know brands in the world.
DELL, famous for computers use turquoise blue capital letters with the E placed at an angle, as logo designers we are always looking for the meanings behind the image, but what is that? A plug, a computer tower, E as in E commerce…
The IBM logo, capital letters in blue with horizontal white lines through them. This logo is iconic, it is like the grandfather of modern logo design, by logo designer Paul Rand in 1972.
Blue is a universally appealing colour. Perhaps it is the association with blue sky and sea. In logo design it may feel like the safe option but not without good reason. Blue is not just about being conservative, blue has a grounded feel about it, a dignity and assurance that makes people respond positively to a logo design, a brand, a business.
If you can think of any noteworthy logo designs that are blue, do let us know and we will add them to our article. If you would like to comment on this article just fill in the box provided, otherwise email us via our contact us page.
Logopro logo designer had fun working on a pizza take-away logo design
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
31 March 2009
Pizza pizza based in Baldock, Hertfordshire, wanted to brand their thriving take-away pizza restaurant. They came to Logopro earlier this month and being in a kitchen rather than at a computer, our client phoned us to request our online logo design services. Pizza Pizza new their onions, but had little idea of what they were looking for in terms of logo design and left us with a blank canvas. We were happy to oblige, our logo designer really enjoyed this project and presented 6 fresh new designs for our client to choose from. Again our client rang to discuss which logo he liked and gave us a few ideas on how to develop it further. Once we get close to the final design, we try different colour combinations, some more zany than others – pizza pizza chose black and khaki-green for their final logo design, which proved a good idea for what is a very striking and memorable logo design.