Logo designed for the Lake Sunapee Chowder Challenge. circa 2009(ish)
(estimated time 2-15+ hours)
-Costs can range from $50-$500+.
Costs and time spent can vary for logos. You can design it yourself, hire a logo designer, or use a freelancer or logo contest site to design it.
What is the logo going to be used for? List all potential uses your business might use a logo for, not just in the start-up phase but down the road. Is it going to be embroidered? Will it be used for large banners at tradeshows?
It’s a good practice to look at any potential logos and shrink them down to a size that might used on your business cards. Can the graphic be seen and interpreted clearly? Can any text on it or incorporated on it be read easily?
How will the logo look in Black and White and Grayscale if the logo is color?
How many colors will you use? Two-color and three-color logos will be more cost-effective than a color using four colors or more. Because personal printers and commercial printers are sometimes going to have different color hues, keep in mind what looks good to you on the web is not necessarily going to be the same colors you see when you print your logo out on your home printer, or you send the logo to a printer to use on your business cards.
When I first designed the Lake Sunapee Chowder Challenge Logo years ago (above), I didn’t know nearly as much about logo design as I do now. If I had designed this now, I would have colorized the kettle and made sure it was the same design style. The fish is more cartoon-oriented, and the kettle (clip art with some modifications) is more 3D with shading. When translated into black and white, there was still enough definition in the uses we were using it for at the time, print advertising, website and Facebook, large banners, and T-shirts, but the kettle, if done in more bold lines vs. shading would have translated even better into black and white, and this would not have translated well if used for an embroidered logo.
For size, always design as large as possible; it’s easy to scale the size down. It’s impossible to take a small logo with a small resolution and enlarge it, as it will become very fuzzy and pixelated.
If you are doing the logo yourself (and it is a good idea to check whether you are using a graphic designer or another service as well.) Before officially putting it into use, check to see if other similar logos exist. Brand confusion and copyright infringement issues can come up; for example, your logo resembles the Harley Davidson logo. Many DIYers and low-cost designers will use stock graphics as the base for logos, which can be fine, but you can also run into brand confusion if the background graphic is used in other logos extensively and a possible copyright claim.
An example is an association that had someone create a logo for them a few years ago and spent a lot of money on it. Neither the association nor the designer did a back image search on it, and it turns out the main graphic used was used in dozens and dozens of other logos prior.
Upload the graphic to https://tineye.com/ and into Google Image Search https://images.google.com/ and see what pops up. This is especially important if you are planning on copyrighting the logo.
The U.S. Copyright Office at the Library of Congress registers copyrights:
Explanation of Copyright vs Trademark
https://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/basics/trademark-patent-copyright
If using a logo designer:
1. Make sure you get the logo in multiple sizes (including a large print size) and in as many digital formats as possible: JPEG, TIFF, PNG, Vector, B&W, Grayscale, Bitmap, and GIF (at the minimum). Clarify with the designer that this is being used for print AND digital. Digital only generally translates poorly to many larger sizes you might need for print.
2. Make sure they are giving you the name of the font they used or if you have a font preference (this is a consideration in advance to think about before talking to a designer as you need to provide them with this information up front), is this a font you want to use for other things? Are you going to have to purchase it if it’s not a standard font, and if you want to use it for your website, is it a web-safe font? See https://www.w3schools.com/css/css_font_websafe.asp.
3. Make sure they give you the color codes for the colors used in the logo. HEX codes and RGB codes as if you would want to tie those colors into your other branding (website, print items, etc.) https://negliadesign.com/ask-a-designer/whats-the-difference-between-pms-cmyk-rgb-and-hex/
Some addtional resources:
Should I copyright or trademark my logo?
https://www.shermanip.com/should-i-copyright-or-trademark-my-logo/
14 Of The Best Logo Makers To Design a Logo In 2020
15 Things You Must Know About Logo File Types
Reverse Image Search
- https://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/gate.exe?f=login&p_lang=english&p_d=trmk
- https://tineye.com/
- https://www.labnol.org/reverse/
- https://smallseotools.com/reverse-image-search/
- https://images.google.com/
Pantone Color Finder
Online RGB Color Picker
(GIMP) GNU Image Manipulation Program (an alternative to Photoshop)
Color Blind Image Simulator
- https://www.color-blindness.com/coblis-color-blindness-simulator/
- https://pilestone.com/pages/color-blindness-simulator-1
Logo Design Sourcing and Contests
- https://www.hatchwise.com/
- https://www.48hourslogo.com/
- https://www.designcrowd.com/
- https://logotournament.com/
- https://www.crowdspring.com/
- https://99designs.com/logo-design
- https://www.zilliondesigns.com/
- https://www.guerra-creativa.com/en/
Experienced inexpensive designers/freelancers
Other resources: