Every site needs a logo and many times we end up changing logo multiple times for a site. There are multiple online services which lets you quickly prototype a logo or you can use tools like Adone illustrator, Photoshop or Inkscape for designing a logo. This article will not cover design aspects of logo creation process. The aim is to cover what all things to keep in mind when you are getting your logo designed by someone else or designing it yourself.
Here is a high level checklist which is worth keeping handy during logo creation process.
- Always have logo designed in SVG (scalable vector graphics). That way you can make changes to it easily and scale it to various dimensions without quality loss.
- Always create a favicon (Favorite icon ) along with the logo. If favicon is an after thought, then it may not look best. Here is the brief definition of Favicon as per Wikipedia
A favicon (short for Favorite icon), also known as a shortcut icon, Web site icon, URL icon, or bookmark icon, is a file containing one or more small icons, most commonly 16×16 pixels, associated with a particular Web site or Web page.
- You logo should look good on few backgrounds. That gives you option to play with background colors etc. I think if logo looks good on both dark and light backgrounds, then it gives you flexibility in terms of logo placement choices.
- Keeping logo with transparent background is also a good idea. That way it fits well with other background easily.
- Important words or characters in your logo should be more prominent than other less important words.
- You may also need square version of your logo (e.g. for YouTube channel requires square logo along with few other sizes). Facebook page also requires a square logo. It is also a good idea to create square logo along with main logo.
- Keep logo as simple as possible. Should be easily readable.
- For your site and other places create multiple size png/gif/jpg logo files and serve the exact size required on that page instead of scaling down the image in html at client side. That way logo loads faster.
