Logo Design and Web Design A Combination to Effectively Win Minds and Hearts

So much has been said about the importance of a logo design in brand development, marketing and promotional strategy of a business. We have said many things and discuss many perspectives of it on this blog alone and so many wonderful blog posts on our logo design blog. There is no doubt that a logo design is not just a pretty picture to decorate the walls of your office or the premises of your business. A logo design is the identity and the image of your business and how it should be and it is perceived in the eyes of your customers.

A quality logo design alone is nothing in itself until it is applied properly and used cleverly for the benefit of the business or the brand it is representing. There are many ways and each day people are coming up with new innovative ideas to use their logo into different mediums and achieve the maximum brand exposure. However, for starters some places can be a good way to get started on your brand development.

In today's modern web savvy and technologically advanced society, people are spending a lot of their time on the web. Most smart businesses are aware of that and they are spending a lot of their resources to get maximum exposure on the web. They want to be every where from social web to social bookmarks, from blogs to news sites. The best place to start placing your logo design is your own business website.

Make The Web Easier - One Website At a Time

Every day there are thousands of new websites appearing on the web. If you are a small business you would notice that in your industry, in your region, there are new websites appearing every day. The growth of the web is magnificent, but is it useful as well?

Certainly, information and the abundance of it is very useful for human society as a whole. However, people publishing this information on the web, do they make it easier for the users to find it and use it the way they want?

Sadly, this is not true in most cases. A large number of websites are not very usable as far as usability standards are concerned. Even more websites follow any accessibility standards and very few follow the coding standards. Designers are forced by their clients to create websites that are more eye candy and less practical. The web design industry is growing because of the business brought to it by the small businesses and unfortunately these small businesses believe that if they are paying for the design they must get the most out of their money.

The purpose of design is not primarily to create eye candy. The purpose of design is to make things easier so that they can achieve the goals and fulfill their purpose. A web design is good if it helps a business grow, increases the sales, or brings more loyal customers. A web design that is extremely pretty but otherwise not very helpful is a bad web design.

How Art helps Marketing

No matter what other people say, I believe that designing logo for a business is actually an art form. The creative process is a painful journey which results into joy of creation. Artists who cherish freedom might not enjoy what we do as logo designers. But we enjoy when we can create something that explains a carefully crafted idea to benefit an organization.

Attractive design and beautiful illustrations can do wonders for businesses. However even the best designs fail when they are used with inexperienced hands. Obtaining an artistic logo design is not enough, businesses need to know how they can market the artistic idea behind their logo design.

And when we are talking about art for business, let us not forget other graphic design feilds such as brochure design, banner design, poster design and so on. I would go as far as including web design in the category too. The combination of color, design and aesthetic sense or organized structures is what good web design is all about. But again good design is not good marketing.

Good marketing is when the businesses apply the designs created by the designers keeping in mind the style and message these designs communicate. We all have seen amazing designs displayed at bad places or used ineffectively. This is not just the waste of resources but also affects the brand itself.

Web Design and your Logo

Using your visual brand identity on your website is just as important as anything else. Small businesses often ignore the fact that the consistency in design increases the comfort level, makes it more easier, memorable and reminding. I have often seen websites where logo at the top of the web pages does not meet the rest of the website's theme it looks alien and not at all memorable.

The question is whether you need to get your logo designed to meet your web design needs? - OR - you should have your web design styled to match your logo design?

Logo design is used every where from print to web, to brochure and on coffee mugs. While your web design is only used on the web. So your logo design should be made to fit all those mediums. It is the best strategy to hire the same company or web designer to do your logo that way it will be much easier for them to maintain consistency between designs.

On your website, your logo is not going to be only image. You would probably be using flickr, twitter, facebook buttons as well. I have seen countless websites ruining their sidebars with many colorful buttons for countless social networking websites. Don't do that please, instead select a few popular social networks where you have some influence and get your buttons chromed to meet the color scheme of your web design.

The Myth of Web 2.0 Logo Design

I was just reading some blogs and there someone mentioned a term Logos in Web 2.0 style. I did not understand the term so I searched further and found out that there are designers working on logo designs following the popular web 2.0 style trends.

First of all who describes what is web 2.0 style trend. I know that larger fonts and bright colors are the web 2.0 style. But when we design logos we need to make sure that these logos work on all media whether it is print or the web.

To debunk the myth of this style trend just think of a lemon green business logo with extra large Arial typeface. Such a logo would fade away from print and the type would look really ugly. So perhaps the web 2.0 style is just a myth after all it has web 2.0 in it so how it could be applied to all sort of graphic design trends.

Perhaps these colors and style could be followed if the client specifically need a logo for a web design project alone. However, as a professional it would be our obligation to inform them that such a logo won’t look good in print or television and you might need to create different versions for different media.

Life of a Fantastic Logo Design

This logo design of the world's most famous soft drink is around since more than a century now. It hasn't died, and even though the company had tried new logo designs in the past but none of them worked as good as this one. The reasons are strong consumer association with the brand identity.

This logo design shows us that if you create a fantastic logo design and run it with an extremely resourceful marketing campaign then your logo design would stick to the subconscious of the consumers. This logo would become not only the identity of the product but it could also become a pop culture icon.

The logo designs like that of Coca Cola are not very common though. Most businesses keep changing their logos by the time to meet their needs. For example expansion of business interests and areas would need a new re-branding campaign which begins with the redesign of the logo. It is not necessary to change the design completely, in fact such a practice could be devastating. However little improvements in an already established brand could bring great changes.

Most small businesses usually do not understand or can not afford re-branding their identity. First of all small business owners usually can not afford aggressive business expansions, which leads them to believe that they do not need aggressive branding and marketing either. However, research has proved that small businesses can do much better and can even get to a point where they could actually launch aggressive business moves by spending wisely on their brand identity and effective marketing. Effective marketing begins with a brand identity by building graphic images that become an icon of your business.

These graphic images or logos can be designed by yourself at home or you can always hire a professional logo designer to do the job. You can even find logo design companies that would do not only your logo but would also provide you with stationary design, templates, web design, brochures and other marketing tools. In the upcoming posts we will discuss these tools and how they can be used for effective marketing.