Guide to Designing and Protecting Your Logos

[helix7]

Ok people.. here is the first draft of my Guide to Designing and Protecting Your Logos document. Let me know what you think, and if you have any suggestions.

This document is meant to be a starting point for planning and designing a logo. It is a work in progress, and contributions/suggestions/critiques are welcome.

Guide to Designing and Protecting Your Logos

Inspiration strikes at random times, and it is easy to get caught up in quickly rendering your idea and posting it online. But in the increasingly risky world of copyright infringement, unethical design practices, and mass communication, it is becoming more important for designers to be responsible in their work. With this in mind, here are some guidelines for planning, designing, and presenting logos.

Consider your goal. Who is your audience? What would appeal most to the typical consumer of the product or service that your client provides? What type of logo will or will not work for this client?

How will the client use the logo? Is it going to be printed on 10,000 pieces of letterhead? If so, does the client really want to spend the extra money printing 10,000 copies of their logo in 4 colors? Should you be designing a 1-color logo instead, or can your 4-color logo also display nicely in 1-color (or black when the client faxes a piece of that letterhead to someone)? Will it be reproduced in larger sizes?

Take your time designing. If you cranked out your design in Photoshop in 5 minutes, it's far from done. Take your time, and let the design evolve. Even when you're satisfied with it, keep trying to improve it. Even if you don't stand to make much (or any) money on this logo, you always want to present your best, most professional work.

Kerning. If you don't know what kerning is, look into it. Basically, kerning is the process of adjusting the space between each letter of a word, and it is probably the single most important (and overlooked) step in designing a logo. When you type a word into an image, a document, a webpage, anything, the program figures out the letter spacing mathematically. And for that reason, it looks terrible. Kerning is strictly visual, and there is no mathematical formula for perfect letter spacing. Ever wonder why some of the simplest logos and wordmarks that contain no actual graphics still look 100x better than your graphic-heavy logo? It's because someone spent 50+ hours making miniscule adjustments to letter spacing until each space was absolutely perfect. If you don't have dreams about kerning, you're not doing it enough.

Spelling. I know it seems ridiculous that I actually have to add this, but I think it's ridiculous that I see so many logos that have the company name spelled incorrectly. If you can't be bothered to check the spelling of a logo (like it's really time-consuming to check all two or three of the words in most logos), maybe you should look into a different career. Designers must pay attention to details, and spelling is a pretty freakin' big detail.

Keep it original. As you go through the process, your design will take on several different shapes along the way. If your design starts to look like something you've seen before, it is more than likely that you have, in fact, seen it before. Don't deliberately copy a design, and if you suspect that you might be inadvertently copying a design, find out for sure before you sell it to the client. A designer's reputation is priceless and difficult to rebuild once it's damaged. It's not worth risking your reputation for a $50 prize. All of your work should be yours and yours alone. Every shape, every graphic, every letter and number. Finding inspiration in someone else's design is one thing. Tracing that design is another. Don't do it.

Be aware of the risks in taking the easy way out. As more and more resources become available online for free shapes, icons, graphics, an photos, it is more and more tempting to use these resources in your designs. And while legally you might be in the clear when using these resources, consider the other risks involved. What would you do if a client called you up and said that they wanted their money back because they saw their logo graphic in a free icon collection at so-and-so.com?

Copyright violations are serious business. You may think it's perfectly innocent to copy a graphic from some lame website you found. What you may not know is that the company behind that lame website took all the money they saved by not hiring a website designer and spent it on an all-star legal team, and now they have their sights set on you.

Copyrights can also protect you. Copyrighting your work is a way to add a certain degree of protection to your intellectual property. It is a good idea (especially in online presentations) to clearly state your ownership of the copyright. And this does not necessarily mean registering with a copyright office. Simply by being the creator of a design, it is your intellectual property and you own the rights to it. You are entitled to place the copyright symbol on it immediately after creating it.

Protect your graphics. It's happened before, and it will happen again. Someone creates a beautiful logo, which all of a sudden ends up in the client's website, and when you asked to get paid for it, they claim they never heard of you. Now I personally don't like watermarks. But at this point we all have little choice in the matter. Create an effective watermark and include it in your online presentations. It also doesn't hurt to knock down the image quality a bit. Don't give away an easily-reproduced and edited image. Watermark it and keep the image quality at standard web dimensions and compression levels. There is no reason for you to ever send a client high-resolution or vector files before getting paid. They can see what they will get in the low-resolution preview image, and if they really want that image (and the hi-res files associated with it), they must pay for it.

[Egor]

Nice work. Glad to see kerning in there!

[phacker]

Nice guidelines, but who's going to read them?

[Dache]

Thankyou for the information.
Watermarks makes entries look a tad less prettier, but on the other hand you dont want to make freebies. I was wondering, for the contests here at sitepoint, is it really advisable to put watermarks on the entries?

[phacker]

Lately it seems like a good idea. For awhile some of the contest holders really objected to them and we all stopped using them. But during the last week a few designs have been hijacked for free.

[Egor]

Originally Posted by Dache

Thankyou for the information.
Watermarks makes entries look a tad less prettier, but on the other hand you dont want to make freebies. I was wondering, for the contests here at sitepoint, is it really advisable to put watermarks on the entries?

I've never bothered. While they do make designs harder to steal, anyone willing to go that low could simply take the idea and recreate it (or find someone else to do so).

It will always be a bit of a gamble doing work with no deposit up-front.

[jshibbly]

Great guideline. I think you covered everything in a nutshell. Perhaps if this thread is moved as a Sticky in the Contest Forum, we might get more people to read it.

[Dark Tranquility]

Nice guidelines ! and yes, a sticky thread in the contests forum will offer more visibility for 'em

[phacker]

Originally Posted by Egor

I've never bothered. While they do make designs harder to steal, anyone willing to go that low could simply take the idea and recreate it (or find someone else to do so).

It will always be a bit of a gamble doing work with no deposit up-front.

Well some of the folks doing the stealing right now probably don't know how to go about isolating the watermark, they are just interested in the quick buck.

[phacker]

This is just amazing, something has to be done:

http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/show...7&postcount=46

[ses5909]

Very nice write up!

Phacker..did you already report the post??

[phacker]

You betcha I hit the little triangle thingy Shyflower talks about.

[phacker]

These new folks think anything goes, it's almost like the wild west around here lately.

[ses5909]

Originally Posted by phacker

You betcha I hit the little triangle thingy Shyflower talks about.

LOL.. wonderful

[phacker]

But if action isn't taken quickly who takes it seriously?

[phacker]

Some designers have sold many dubious designs, because the outing threads are deleted, but the designer is never outed.

[helix7]

Originally Posted by phacker

This is just amazing, something has to be done:

http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/show...7&postcount=46

That's crazy.. it's like people know they're stealing, but they figure they'll just do it until they get caught. The real kicker is, this guy will probably do it again after that contest is over.

[phacker]

What's even crazier is it seems he got away with it.

[OrangeFlea]

Awesome guide. Thanks.

[ckita]

Nice one H7

it's really been wild in the contest section lately...