Do you want to save your time and thousands of dollars? Well, stay one step ahead of everyone. It’s always beneficial to know both Do’s but more importantly the Don’ts. Let’s talk about these common logo design mistakes and how to avoid them.
And thus, we will focus on the “Don’ts” today i.e the logo design mistakes to avoid.
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Common Logo Design Mistakes #1:
Poor Choice of Brand Colors
Now tell me this, why do people look for latest logo designs for ideas?
Because design changes with trends. Logo trends are in picture from a very long time now, like way back from 70s.
So should we follow the trend and change our logo frequently? Is that what your target audience want?
Keep reading and you will find that out below.
Let me ask you this. Imagine a company who is in the food business and see their logo. What do you think about this design:
No? Well they also changed it the below design.
Still no? The company did not lose hope too. They made the change again to fit better in the corporate logo lifestyle and designed the draft as below:
I am sure you get the point now. When you hear food, you most certainly do not think of a pink color or a blue color. Do you?
The very first in the list of common logo design mistakes is this. Color plays a crucial role in branding.
Companies often spend millions on branding because that’s what we will remember.
Logo color psychology should be one of the top priorities while picking the color what’s best for you, for your brand.
Look at the below designs and tell me if you don’t feel good looking at each logo:
Colors play a unique role in your logo and trust building among customers. To test this out, branded in memory experiment was conducted on 156 people.
They were asked to draw 10 iconic logos from memory.
While the results varied, most people were able to draw perfectly fine.
Especially the brand colors!
Since this blog isn’t about the in-depth of color psychology, let’s not distract ourselves and stick to the common logo design mistakes to avoid.
Incorrect Typography
There are people from two different worlds when it comes to pick typography for you design:
- Who picks Helvetica
- Who picks Brand authentic typography
The above picture has Helvetica logos. Looks great right?
But imagine Coca-Cola or McDonald’s written in the above font. Looks appealing?
That’s correct. It doesn’t.
Helvetica is not the solution for every brand. A logo can be made in just few minutes but prior to it, the research about your target audience, their interests and the objective of your own brand should be thoroughly done.
For instance, let’s take 2 examples to quickly see how the fonts for the brands are picked or should be picked:
- You run a cab service in specific locations. Your potential customers are people who are travelling to places inside the radius of target locations.
When you hear cab or taxi, the first thing that pops in your mind is probably a car. But you are in 2019, and having a logo like this:
Nah!
The minimal your design is, the more it is liked, the more it is remembered.
In addition, you can have a sense of feeling while looking at the logo that it somewhat looks like a road or highway but it seems about right to the services they provide. This is what a logo does for the brand.
- Another example can be for a food company. Now you own a food company(that’s great) and you deliver to some locations(since you just started).
Now maybe a hamburger is in your mind? Or Fries? Or something that you like to eat. But it’s the same here as with the cab service. The art here is to pass your message to customers through typography.
That’s the reason why Burger King is now written as you know it.
People tend to follow the trend quite often. Back in 2010, GAP tried to do so too. GAP thought of changing the logo from Uppercase letter to Title Case to see people’s reactions to it.
What do you think about it?
That is exactly how people reacted to it and GAP had to turn things around to the original logo.
Feels about right, right?
Sometimes you don’t realize but the originality is loved by people. And that originality was in the typography.
Now you have the gist of what NOT to use, let’s take a look at another logo design mistake people usually does while creating a logo.
Quick Read:
Check out Savannah’s great collection of the bad typography logos of all time. And they truly are!
Did you check the beginner’s guide for logo design yet? Check it out.
Background Image or Not?
If you are reading this, then at this point you already know that logos should be high resolution images, high vector images.
But should you use background vector images or 3D designs in your logo?
Let’s find out.
Unless you are recognised easily even with the blurred images, like the latest McDonald’s billboard campaign where McDonald’s have used blur images on the billboards and still were recognised by people.
But you should not do it with logo. Never!
Let’s talk about background images for few minutes now. Background images are not a logo trend and should never be any trend. Have a look at the below logo:
I know. It’s bad and a complete fail from every aspect. But for now, let’s only focus on the background image.
Firstly, it doesn’t make sense for a pharmacy to have an oval shape which can define anything to what services they provide.
Secondly, the responsive logo on the mobile device would look so crowded that it would lose its appeal quickly.
Another example can be the one as shown below
I suppose you can make the judgement here.
Poor choice of color, font and well the image itself is inappropriately used in the design.
Yet another logo design mistakes to avoid.
You can have an image and a typography in logo design but in order to make it brand authentic, you need to learn the placement of elements.
3D Logo Designs. Yet Another Logo Design Mistake.
Well 3D designing was in fashion a few years back but ever since Apple introduced the flat design trend, other brands are following it. Digital trends for logos are changing at a rapid scale. Check out the logo trends for 2019 by 99designs and you would know it.
3D is old school. Today, we believe in professional, minimalistic, responsive flat designs.
Now what would you prefer: Before or After?
That’s right. Flat designs have become the graphic design trend very quickly and is going to last for much longer time.
My personal favorite is the Pepsi logo design. It has followed digital trends or I would say design trends but also kept the brand identity intact.
Almost all corporate brands have now changed their logos to flat designs as they are more noise-free and sleek.
Not only the logos are changed to flat designs, but you might have noticed the icons everywhere, in every app, are also flat.
As per statcounter, 47.96% users today are using mobile devices for browsing and thus every company is focused on making a responsive design to provide the best quality experience to the customers.
Wouldn’t you want it? I would!
Logo is one of the top reasons for brand identity among customers. It builds people’s trust for the brand. Somehow flat designs soothes us, gives us a sense of easiness. Keeps us away from chaos.
Minimum the details, more it is remembered.
That’s how our memory works now a days. It is based upon our interests and the more easy we feel, the more easily we click a mental picture of the logo. Thus the brand.
Quick Read:
Sure colors are important. But how to use these colors?
Plagiarism. Do not Steal!
You are trying to make your name in the world with your brand but you are stealing somebody else’s logo. Question is, is it you who is getting the fame or that person in this case?
Logo theft is considered a serious crime in digital world.
You can face real consequences like:
- Go to the jail for sure
- Pay a huge amount of fine upto $150,000 for each logo infringement. Are you really up for it?
- Your profits will soon convert to civil damages
We all know Adidas and Forever21 brands right?
Adidas is known for the three stripes logo and the company has invested a lot in it to protect their identity and trademark. In 2017, Forever21 introduced sneakers as shown in the image below.
It may not be similar to Adidas’ three stripes but it still gives the sense of it. Adidas filed a lawsuit against Forever21 following which the company, Forever21, had to reconsider the designs in order to save themselves from a huge fine.
Azrights, has done a tremendous job in explaining all the heavy terminologies of logo infringement. Go check it out!
Designshack explained what needs to be done if your logo is stolen.
Conclusion
A recent study found that the majority of people, like 40%, can’t recall the logos of brands they see every day. Imagine if you would follow every trend and make changes to your brand.
You would be losing a lot of audience. Can you believe that? It is true.
To sum up what we read above, it is totally unacceptable and can cause you real damage if you do not avoid these common logo design mistakes:
- Do not use colors that don’t go with your brand. Imagine having McDonald’s in pink and you will get my point.
- Having round typography for a giant MNC or a straight font for a toy store does not go well now does it? You need to pick the right typography as it speaks to your customers about your services.
- Logo trends or design trends generally promote what people like to see. But no one would like to see a huge faded image in the background of a typed logo while scrolling on their smartphones. Avoid making this mistake.
- People like simplicity. We like it! So why make the logo so complex to understand and remember. Keep it flat and recognisable.
- I keep this point in the last because if you are skimming then you might end up here and this is one of the most important logo mistakes to avoid. Do not build something of your own on someone else’s design.
To know these points and their consequences in detail, you might want to go up if you have not read it all the way here.
But if you have then you know all about it and I thank you for reading it. Do not hesitate to drop your comments if you have any concerns.