Things to consider when creating a logo According to Joar (Joomla) Vatnaland

1. Colours Have a think about the psychology of colours. What image of your company do you want to portray? Companies that provide services requiring trust may want to go for more conservative colours, like blue and green. Companies that want to portray themselves as young, fun and trendy might consider colours like red and yellow. Read up about the impact of colours on the mind, for instance here. Too many colours is normally not a good idea. Also think about accessibility, as a certain percentage of the population has colour blindness. 2. Image Just like for colours, what your logo actually depicts will have a psychological impact. Before commissioning a logo, sit down and think about some key words that you want to describe your company brand. It could be words like fun, vibrant, modern, quality, laid-back, young, classy etc... These are words that you need to give to your graphic designer or corporate branding expert. 3. How will it look in greytones? Sometimes your logo might be printed on a black-and-white printer or copied on a copier, and you should consider how your logo would come out then. 4. Size Especially on a website, many make the mistake of letting the logo take too much space. The website is about your visitors, not you. They're not really interested in seeing your huge logo on each page. Your web pages are prime real estate to tell your visitors information that they might be interested in. 5. Resolution A logo for use on a website needs a resolution of 72dpi, but if you send that to a printer, they will moan about it. For good printing quality you should have 300dpi or more. So be sure you use the right resolution for the right purpose. 6. Image type Logos should be created with vector based graphics. Why? Because with vector based graphics you can scale the image up and down without loosing image quality. If your image is made in rastergraphics - like a JPEG image for example - you will loose quality if you blow it up, for instance to put in on a billboard. A good program to create vector based graphics is Adobe Illustrator. From the master file you can then produce files in various sizes according to your need. 7. Inclusion of text and details Including names, addresses, URL's and other things into the logo picture is not such a good idea in my opinion. This is because these details can change, and if they do, you don't have to recreate your logo. Use text, slogans, URL's and so on separate from the logo picture itself. 8. Background Having a transparent background for the logo can be quite useful. Transparency means that you can place the image on a non-white background, and it will blend in. If it has a white background, you can't place it on a non-white background without it becoming a bit of an eyesore. The GIF and PNG file formats support transparency, JPEG does not. PNG is now supported almost everywhere, and is a good format to use for logos on the web.

Page Layout

Beginning from early illuminated pages in hand-copied books of the Middle Ages and proceeding down to intricate modern magazine and catalog layouts, proper page design has long been a consideration in printed material. With print media, elements usually consist of type (text), images (pictures), and occasionally place-holder graphics for elements that are not printed with ink such as die/laser cutting, foil stamping or blind embossing.

Since the advent of personal computing, page layout skills have expanded to electronic media as well as print media. The electronic page is better known as a graphical user interface (GUI) when interactive elements are included. Page layout for interactive media overlaps with (and is often called) interface design. This usually includes interactive elements and multimedia in addition to text and still images. Interactivity takes page layout skills from planning attraction and eye flow to the next level of planning user experience in collaboration with software engineers and creative directors.

A page layout may be designed in a rough paper and pencil sketch before producing, or produced during the design process to the final form. Both design and production may be achieved using hand tools or page layout software. Producing a web page may require knowledge of markup languages along with WYSIWYG editors to compensate for incompatibility between platforms. Special considerations must be made for how the layout of an HTML page will change (reflow) when resized by the end-user. Cascading style sheets are often required to keep the page layout consistent between web browsers.

Wikipedia

Visual Arts

Visual Arts are art forms that create works which are primarily visual in nature, such as ceramics, drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, design, crafts, and often modern visual arts (photography, video, and filmmaking) and architecture. These definitions should not be taken too strictly as many artistic disciplines (performing arts, conceptual art, textile arts) involve aspects of the visual arts as well as arts of other types. Also included within the visual arts are the applied arts such as industrial design, graphic design, fashion design, interior design and decorative art.

As indicated above, the current usage of the term "visual arts" includes fine art as well as the applied, decorative arts and crafts, but this was not always the case. Before the Arts and Crafts Movement in Britain and elsewhere at the turn of the 20th century, the term artist was often restricted to a person working in the fine arts (such as painting, sculpture, or printmaking) and not the handicraft, craft, or applied art media. The distinction was emphasized by artists of the Arts and Crafts Movement who valued vernacular art forms as much as high forms. Art schools made a distinction between the fine arts and the crafts maintaining that a craftsperson could not be considered a practitioner of art.

The increasing tendency to privilege painting, and to a lesser degree sculpture, above other arts has been a feature of Western art as well as East Asian art. In both regions painting has been seen as relying to the highest degree on the imagination of the artist, and the furthest removed from manual labour - in Chinese paintingthe most highly valued styles were those of "scholar-painting", at least in theory practiced by gentleman amateurs. The Western hierarchy of genres reflected similar attitudes.

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Typography

is the art and technique of arranging type, and sometimes modifying typeglyphs. Type glyphs are modified using a variety of illustration techniques. The arrangement of type involves the selection of typefaces, point size, line length, leading (line spacing), adjusting the spaces between groups of letters (tracking) and adjusting the space between pairs of letters (kerning). Type design is a closely related craft, which some consider distinct and others a part of typography; most typographers do not design typefaces, and some type designers do not consider themselves typographers.

Typography is performed by typesetters, compositors, typographers, graphic designers, art directors, comic book artists, graffiti artists, and clerical workers. Until the Digital Age, typography was a specialized occupation. Digitization opened up typography to new generations of visual designers and lay users.

Wikipedia

Graphic Design

Graphic design is a creative process – most often involving a client and a designer and usually completed in conjunction with producers of form (i.e., printers, programmers, signmakers, etc.) – undertaken in order to convey a specific message (or messages) to a targeted audience. The term "graphic design" can also refer to a number of artistic and professional disciplines that focus on visual communication and presentation. The field as a whole is also often referred to as Visual Communication or Communication Design. Various methods are used to create and combine words, symbols, and images to create a visual representation of ideas and messages. A graphic designer may use typography, visual arts and page layout techniques to produce the final result. Graphic design often refers to both the process (designing) by which the communication is created and the products (designs) which are generated.

Common uses of graphic design include identity (logos and branding), web sites, publications (magazines, newspapers, and books), advertisements and product packaging. For example, a product package might include a logo or other artwork, organized text and pure design elements such as shapes and color which unify the piece. Composition is one of the most important features of graphic design, especially when using pre-existing materials or diverse elements.

Wikapedia