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.

Adobe Illustrator Tips and Tutorials for Logo Design Artists

Adobe Illustrator is the most commonly used vector graphic tool. We use it to create custom logo design for our clients. We are seriously thinking about starting a blog focused on using the Adobe Illustrators with tips and tutorials to do different things. Meanwhile we thought it would be a great idea to compile a list of websites publishing Adobe Illustrator tips and tutorials for newbies.

Adobe.com Illustrator Help and Support - Official Adobe Illustrator Support site has many tutorials, tips and video tutorials.

Adobe Illustrator Exchange is a place where you can share your illustrator graphics with the community and see other's work for inspiration and learning.

DesktopPublishing.com's Adobe Illustrator Tips and Tutorials page. It contains links to many tutorials from across the web, making it a good starting point for someone who is already a little familiar with Illustrator.

Illustrator Tips, Instructions Information Inspiration is their motto.

Adobe Illustrator Tutorials. We really liked their Basics & Tools category which contains articles specifically for beginners.

Smashing Magazine: Illustrator Tutorials, Smashing magazine has some very good tutorials too.

Make Banner Design Effective Marketing Tool

Banner graphics are still the largest most popular format of online advertisement. But years ago advertisers and marketers came to a conclusion that the wide usage of common formats of online banner design has made the audiences banner blind. What does it mean? To simply put people have now decided to ignore the online banner advertisements.

Recently it was also discovered that banner designs can be the most annoying form of web advertisements after pop ups and pop-unders. However, many advertisers still report that the banners are still there most effective tool.

First of all not all banner designs are annoying. Each day we often come across various informative, suggestive, thought provoking, interesting and brilliant banner designs. They key that small businesses, advertisers and marketers need to understand that in order to be effective their banner design needs to be less annoying and more web friendly or I would say more audience friendly.

Lets first understand the anatomy of a horrible banner design; this design is noisy, offensive, unintelligent, dumb and very boring. This particular banner design has the ability to make me hate the websites that display it and make me use plugins to block all the advertisements. This is a banner design that disturbs me with its fast moving animations and shocking bright, eye teasing colors. This annoying banner design makes false promises and fraudulently invites me to click it by displaying deceptive images.

To make a banner design a really effective marketing tool we need to remove all the elements that make our banner design annoying and instead we should add elements that would make our banner design more clickable and likable.

Colors, using colors that do not hurt the eyes of the viewer is something that cannot be stressed more. Please stop using red font on a yellow background. It really hurts the eyes, looks ugly and ruins the design of any web page hosting and displaying this hideous banner design.

Animations, it is wonderful to know that an advertiser paid extra money to get an animated banner design. Even though most designers would tell you that faster animations make a banner less clickable. But businesses believe that the designers are avoiding extra work, hence they insist on more animation. Please note that a banner that animates too fast not only looks ugly but it also slowdowns a viewer’s machine. Use simple animations that are not too fast and not too distracting.

Fraudulent banners are the most offensive ones. These are the banner designs that pretend to look like an operating system menu and warning the user about some potential threat or an announcement that they have won something. There are even banners that offer people instant wealth, fame and glory. We all wish the world was that easier, and we all know that it is not. So please stop making a fool of yourself no one is actually going to click on such a banner with an intention of becoming a customer.

Inspiring Lives by Logo Design

As we have discussed earlier that a logo is not just an advertising gimmick, it speaks volumes about many things and has socio-cultural aspects as well.

In the United States Geoff Livingston, a prominent blogger/ web media guru has recently got a logo tattooed on his arm. Livingston announced that he if raised $5000 for the Lance Armstrong Foundation, he will get organization’s logo tattooed on his arm as a payback and to thank the contributors. Lance Armstrong Foundation is an organization that works for cancer patient's welfare and cancer research.

Livestrong Logo Tattoed / CC BY-SA 2.0

Just like you would expect from a web communication expert, Livingston used facebook and twitter to spread the word about the cause among his social networks, he also raised money during the SxSW event in Austin, Texas. Once he crossed the $5000 USD mark, Livingston got himself tattooed. With the help of his blogging, social networks and public speaking Mr. Livingston raised the amount. He then asked the readers of his blog to help him choose a logo design for the tattoo and based on reader suggestions he picked up Livestrong Halo as the logo.

Logo Design - Color Ideas

Colors are the foundation of a good logo design. How a graphic design artist picks up a color palette? Where to look for the ideas and why use a palette? Why not just allow the instinct to take over the artistic mind and create a fiasco?

There are certain limitations when you are working for clients. You are creating visual images of their businesses. These are like tiny portraits of their business, their values and how they want to be seen. So it needs to be well organized, presentable and meaningful. Choosing the right color palette is the beginning of the idea. 

To pick colors you need to understand your clients business and their mission statement. Who they are? What their future plans are and what kind of people do business with them.

Now keeping this information in mind a Logo Design artist you should study colors. Colors not just represent the shades of light. Colors may represent wholesome ideas. Blue may represent calmness, water, sky, and peace. But, it can also represent firmness and strength. Red is supposed to represent love and passion but it can also be representing war and blood. 

Colors may also have different effects in different cultures. The effect of colors may also change in different scenarios, periods, age groups. Considering all this will help you choose your color ideas. Once you have a few colors you can add relevant colors to add contrast and shades. Too many colors might be disorienting so most artists stick to their limited color palette which simplifies the whole idea of their logo design in a coherent and meaningful manner. 

Bunnell, Florida: Flagler County Approves New Logo Design

I have decided to share logo design news with the readers of this blog. The purpose is to highlight how businesses and organizations across the globe and particularly in the United States are trying to achieve their marketing goals and how they are using logos to do that effectively.

Flagler County Old Logo	Flagler county New Logo

In Bunnell Florida, Flagler County has recently approved a new logo design for the county. In september last year the county announced a logo design competition and called for enteries. After recieving 113 entries out of which 72 were student entries, a committee of local marketing professionals hand picked the best three designs.

However, the winning logos are not going to be the official count logo. The county hired a professional graphic designer to do a logo design for the county by incorporating elements from the top choosen designs from the contest. The professional graphic designer then took suggestions from the comissioners and borrowed heavily from the winning logo design.

As you can see this logo is built specifically for the marketing purposes and attempts to highlight tourism industry by presenting an environment friendly image. Eco tourism is already big in Flagler county and the officials hope that by using the new logo on county stationary, vehicles and other marketing materials they could do more effective marketing.

PepsiCo Logo Design and World Domination

Remember Swastika, During the WWII Hitler’s ambitions to conquer to world and impose his ideologies on the world were often reflected by that sign. Later on, Hollywood took over the legacy of Hitler and continued to associate the swastika with Evil Geniuses.

In today’s corporate world the largest multinational corporations do not hesitate to show their ideologies about conquering the world and dominating entire global market. Well of course we cannot compare these corporations with the Nazi Hitler, but there is similarity between today’s multinationals and Nazi Germany, dreams of total world domination.

Here are some examples from PepsiCo’s logo’s representing planet earth and company’s global reach.

The New Pepsi 3D Logo Design

Pepsico Corporate Logo Design Global Expansion Products covering the Globe

Pepsico Corporate Globe Logo Again surrounded by Products