The logo is the first image that the company presents to the public. It is imperative that the design of the company logo looks professional and makes a strong impact on the market.
Since the significant role of the logo has been established, it goes to follow that designing one should not be done by just anybody. If the design looks amateurish, it will also convey a low level of professionalism in the company. You must ensure that the logo truly reflects what the company is all about. The common trait amongst professional designers is their penchant for details. This is the key to a good logo design. One of these details, the color, is a major consideration in business logo designs.
Using the right combination of colors in your company logo design will greatly affect the logo’s objective to convey clearly the company’s thrust, products or services and name. You do not need all sorts of colors on your logo. It is also not always wise to select unusual or very unique color schemes. When it comes to colors, the foremost consideration is the compatibility- whether they complement each other or not.
The right colors for your company logo are those that have appeal and impact. You should also consider its staying power. Logos are prominent in all kinds of events such as special company events, sales conferences and publicity campaigns. Your company logo is the first to speak about your business in these events. They serve as magnets to attract new deals.
Your corporate logo’s colors should also be relevant to your type of business. For instance, if you are offering consultancy services, you may opt for simple and modest colors like different hues of black and white; while businesses that have something to do with water will typically choose hues of blue and white. The most popular colors for logos are black, white, red and blue. Do not go for more than 4 different colors for your company logo.
Vector art
What is vector art? Vector art is a digital art form that consists of geometric shapes and is achieved through the use of illustration or drawing software like the Adobe Illustrator. Geometric shapes that make up vector art are shapes, lines and fills. The shapes found therein are defined by mathematical equations saved in the program. Just like the definition of vector in math, vector art has both direction and value.
A vector art can readily be customized in the software from which it was made. Also, reducing or enlarging the size does not change the vector art significantly. What is being modified when you want to scale the vector art is the mathematical equation that supports it. While vector files are usually saved in PDF or EPS format, it cannot sustain photographs. This poses a problem when you have to change among dissimilar platforms.
A good application of vector art is in designing logos. A vector logo can be scaled according to your needs without foregoing quality. This results to efficient switch from one medium to another. Although making a vector logo is quite complicated, the advantage it entails is worth the effort.
Raster art
Raster art refers to the images captured by digital cameras or digital scanners. Raster art can also be created in Adobe Photoshop or other pixel digital editing software. An image is considered raster art if it consists of pixels (bitmap of digital picture elements), or grid, also known as dot matrix. Pixels are the minute rectangular shaped objects we see on an image. They have their assigned colors and are arranged in rows to form the picture. Raster art comes in the form of TIFF, BMP or JPEG extensions.
Unlike vector art than can be enlarged or reduced without impacting the quality, raster art can be scaled down but cannot be scaled up without resulting to bad-looking images. One can convert vector to raster; but the other way around is not recommended as this usually results to loss of quality and data.
When you choose raster art for your logo design, the ensuing logo will be of limited use. Raster art logos are alright for fine printing and websites. However, if you wish to place your logo on banners or billboard ads, the scaled up raster art will have poor quality. While it is true that Photoshop can provide you with appealing effects, this is not enough to compensate for the pixilated and deteriorated logo. Vector art is hence the better choice if you want versatile logos.
Most people would think that making brochures is as easy as pasting photos and then printing them. But such is not so. To be able to come up with a good-looking brochure, you must first modify the images to ascertain that they are fit to be printed on the brochure.
The following are some tips on how to make brochure-worthy pictures.
- Adjust the contrast and brightness of the image. Using Adobe Photoshop, or other application that has image editing feature, you can adjust the brightness and contrast levels of your photo. You will see that this may result to better quality images with just a few clicks on the contrast and brightness controls.
- Use filters. From the brightness and contrast controls, you then proceed to applying noise and color correction filters. These will further enhance your image.
- Use only high resolution images. When the image looks good on the screen, it does not necessarily follow that it will also look alright when printed on paper. Inherently high resolution images will give you good quality photos both on screen and on paper. Whereas low resolution images will result to blurry pictures when printed.
- Employ borders on your images. When a picture is applied with frames and borders, its impact is more pronounced. Border effects, such as shadows will make your image more interesting and separate from the background.
- Use a distinctive background. Your aim is to make your images pop out and not get lost in the background. The background you should use for your brochure should contrast that of the pictures’. So if for example you have dark images, your background should be light colored; for colorful photos, your background should be plain; and so on.