a printers guide to logo design

8/9/2019 A Printers Guide to Logo Design

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a printers

guide to logodesign

www.melubabadges.com


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A great logo should identify your organisation, help de ne your culture or ethos,

promote your brand and develop loyalty from your customers.

There are lots of free guides, design tools and agencies out there to help you design

your perfect logo but making it work for you is where you can reap the rewards of

building brand recognition and loyalty.

Putting your logo to work on your products, website, business stationery, uniforms,

name badges, signage and promotional items is essential and this can sometimes

be an afterthought. As a result you may nd it more expensive that you thought to

purchase promotional materials, or simply nd that they dont have the same impact

that you had expected.

As a printer and supplier of name badges, promotional items and branded clothing

we will be highlighting some aspects you should consider when designing your

logo to ensure it works uniformly across a wide range of media and promotional

materials.

Many of the tips here can also help you save money and time when it comes

to purchasing branded materials and ensure your logo is prominent, clear and

effective.

Lets begin!

1. Where to Start


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Colours: Spot vs Process2. Applying colour to your logo/brand can be tricky, but as a general rule of thumb it is

wise to start designing your logo in black and white and apply colour at a later stage.

Your choice of colours should lter throughout the look and feel of all of your

organisations documents, literature and beyond, so its an important aspect to

consider carefully. You should also be aware of the print costs you will encounter

when it comes to purchasing branded materials, normally determined by the type of

colour used in your logo.

There are generally two types of colours to choose from, spot colours and process

colours.

Spot colours are solid blocks of colour with no tints, shades or fading, as pictured

below.

Process colours can include all of the aforementioned features, or fading from one

colour to another.

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Traditional printing methods, for anything from stationery to workwear, used spot

colours with the print costs determined by the number of colours used in your

design. Nowadays, digital print is available on most materials, with the number of

colours used being unaffective to the cost of print. However, the cost of digital print

can be a lot more than spot colour printing and often restricts the range of products

available to you.

We would suggest creating your logo using spot colours or at least having a version

of your logo that uses spot colours, as well as a black and white version.

These versions can then be printed using spot colours or digitally leaving you with a

much greater range of promotional items, clothing, signage and the like it to choose

from. Certainly across our range of products, we still nd that we can offer the

lowest prices and best range of items printed in a single colour.


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So you have picked one or more colours for your logo and are ready to go. How can

you make sure that the business cards you need are printed in the correct colour?

Will they be the same shade as the posters and name badges youve purchased?

You may have a CMYK reference for your single colour logo but that reference

can produce vastly different shades depending on the printer being used and the

material your logo is being printed to.

The Pantone Matching System [PMS] is the internationally recognised solution to

reproducing standardised spot colours. Different printers and manufacturers can all

refer to a Pantone Book to match the shade of a colour against their materials and

print.

Creating your logo using pantone colours is essential if you want uniformity across

supplies coming from different manufacturers or printers. These Pantone colour

mugs show how the Pantone Matching System de nes its standard colours.

image credit: Garrett Coakley https://www. ickr.com/photos/garrettc/1673105395

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

3. Colours: Pantones
http://www.pantone.co.uk/http://www.pantone.co.uk/


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What do we mean by a logos proportion? In this case the proportion of a logo refers

to its length in reference to its height; it could be square, portrait or landscape.

Why should this matter? Well if you think about where we typically see logos, the

proportion of your logo can make a huge difference to the impact it has when seen

on signage, clothing, promotional items and more.

Consider a shop front with a large landscape space for signage above a window

and door. How would your logo look in such a space if it were square or portrait?

Equally how would such a logo look if you wanted to order some promotional pens

with your logo printed to the barrel? See how a square logo is con ned to the width

of the barrel:

There are a number of solutions and methods you can employ when designing your

logo to make if suitable for a variety of spaces. If you opt for a square or portrait

logo, can elements such as the brand name or tag line be separated to create a

landscape version?

The same is true in reverse, if you have a landscape logo but have a square area

to ll. When designing, consider what would your logo look like t to various realistic

spaces, and whether your logo can be adapted to t different proportions.

4. Proportion


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More often than not, the best and most recognisable logos are very simple, clean

and based around a font that expresses the culture or identity of your brand. See

how these big brands logos re ect their sophistication (Apple), strength (Gilette) or

agility (Nike).

Websites such as 1001fonts.com allow you to preview your text in a number of fonts

before you download the one you want, and is a great starting point for designing

your logo. The font you choose should embody the character of your organisation

and be appropriate to the marketplace in which you operate.

Why not customise your selected font by extending portions or elements of the

letters making up your logo to make it truly unique?

Regardless of the font you select you should keep in mind that many users outside

of your organisation may not have this font already. Therefore, the le format you

save your logo in, and where and when you use it are important.

Often brands have a family of 2 or 3 fonts. Typically one font would be used on

internal or branded documents, with the font embedded to the document to maintain

its style when viewed by external users. Another popular font is selected for use on

emails and editable documents that your customers and suppliers can see and use.

Keep reading for our section on File Formats for information on how to save and

maintain the fonts used to make your logo.

5. Fonts & Typeface
http://1001fonts.com/http://1001fonts.com/


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Larger organisations who invest heavily in their brand often have brand guidelines

or a brand book that usually details the following information as a minimum:

Brand Essence: de nition of an organisations brand values, promise or

message.

Logo & Tagline: the various approved versions of the logo.

Colour Palette: the speci c Pantone colours to be used including conversions

to CMYK, RGB & HEX Codes.

Typography: the speci c fonts to be used in branded communications

including font sizes etc.

Positioning, Size & Clear Space: how to position the logo on various items

including minimum size and white space around the logo.

Application Examples: the logo shown on a variety of products/materials and

examples of how not to use the logo.

Check out this example of the UNICEF brand book .

Depending on the size of your organisation and the number of people responsible

for purchasing printed items, a brand book might be overkill.

However, a shortened single page version that you can easily refer to will always

be useful to you and your print suppliers, helping to avoid errors and ensure

consistency. We would recommend the following as essential: Logo Versions;

Pantone Colours [primary and secondary] & Fonts.

6. Brand Guidelines
http://www.unicef.org/ethiopia/BrandToolKit_EN_September2012.pdfhttp://www.unicef.org/ethiopia/BrandToolKit_EN_September2012.pdf


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Once you or a designer has created your logo it is best that you have the various

versions of your logo saved in two speci c le formats. You will be asked for one or

both of these by print suppliers depending on what your logo is being applied to.

The rst le format you will need is a Vector Based le set to outlines. This is a

version of your logo made up of points and curves or vectors. This allows designers

to increase or reduce the physical size of your logo without losing the quality and

clarity of the logo. It also allows designers to amend the colours within your logo so

that they can pantone match designs. Vector les are typically used for spot colour

printing and offer the truest representation of your logo.

Vector les usually come in one of the following formats: .eps [encapsulated

postscript]; .ai [adobe illustrator] or .cdr [corel draw].

The second le format you should request your logo in is a Pixel or Bitmap Based

File. This version of your logo can be easily used by non-designers, for your website

and digital media. Such les are made up of varying coloured pixels that when

viewed together from a distance form your logo. As increasing or decreasing the

physical size of the le can cause distortion or pixilation [blurring], it is important that

the le is set-up speci cally for the intended use.

A bitmap has a resolution setting called dpi [dots per inch]. Typically digital media

requires a 72dpi le whilst for print it should be 300dpi or more. You can also set up

the logo size [pixel height or width] speci c to your intended use.

Bitmap les will normally require a full colour process print and usually come in one

of the following formats: .gif; .jpeg; .tif; .png or .ps [adobe photoshop]. It is best to

talk to your printer or designer who should be able to tell you the best settings for

your bitmap logo.

7. File Formats


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There is a lot to consider when designing your logo, and here we have only included

the factors that are useful when it comes to displaying and using your logo on

printed materials.

By keeping these points in mind, you should have the necessary tools to supply the

correct les to a range of different print suppliers. This will ensure that they have the

necessary tools and information to produce your logo consistently across a wide

range of materials and products.

This is key to promoting and building an effective brand that generates familiarity,

loyalty, sets you apart from your competitors and engages your customers.

8. Conclusion


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At meluba we love to help organisations, people and brands promotethemselves supplying everything from name badges to promotionalitems, printed clothing and workwear. Check out our badge website,

www.melubabadges.com , to nd out more about our range ofproducts and services.

Call us on 01536 483 556, send an email to [email protected] ,or get in touch by clicking the button below:

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