What Makes for Good Logo Design?

A common mistake that many small businesses make with their first logo design is to try to do too much. There's a simple rule of thumb for logo design that we can call the CSS rule: Keep it Clean, Simple and Small.

Size Matters!

For web purposes, your logo should be recognizable and easily legible at a height of not more than 85 pixels and a width of not more than 250 pixels. If your designer has generated something for you that can not go that small, make them redesign the logo for you. For print purposes, the logo should be clean and legible at a height of no more than 1/2 inch and a length of no more than one inch.

Generally it is easier for designers to work in larger sizes, so it's common for them to create something that looks terrific, but is too large for the web page. It takes more work to create something that is small, but unless the logo is portable to this smaller size, your options in terms of the web design will be limited. You large-size logo may look terrific on the page by itself, but once you start to put other things on the page, your logo will end up competing for attention with your all-important content and message, and then you're in a real pickle.

In the case of logo design for the web, small is good!

Questions? Contact Christopher Merrill.