10 Most Common Logo Design Mistakes

Congratulations! You have chosen a name for your business, identified your target audience, your competitors, wrote an amazing business plan, invested best efforts and resources in creating the business you dreamed of. Now it's time to choose your logo, which is what sets you apart from your competitors.

Every business needs a dedicated logo that is visually displayed on any document, app, website, and other platforms. A logo is one of the best ways to show the world what your company is about, its style and identity.

When you see a giant golden M, you know you're arriving at a McDonald's restaurant. When you see the logo in the distance in the middle of the highway, you immediately think of food. 🍟

A good logo will make people immediately associate your company with a certain letter or color. Many people think that a logo is not a major consideration – that it is an afterthought that can be quickly pulled together without a great deal of thought and research – because, it’s the ‘product’ that is the main issue, right? Wrong! Your logo is a visual depiction of who you are, what you represent, what your product promises. Rushing it now leads to costly errors in the future. 

So how do you avoid those mistakes? Let’s review the most common mistakes people make while creating a corporate logo. Learning from common errors is the best way to ensure that you avoid the pitfalls and can advance to new industry highs.

Mistake Number 1 - Choosing an Amateur Designer!

 I'm not going to talk too much about platforms like Fiver and other similar sites – there might well be a time that a 5$ design logo is suitable at a certain point in time (for example, a startup company which knows its design will change in the future.)

But for a company product which should have a ‘look and feel’ established from the beginning of its life cycle, this process is critical!

Do not take your branding lightly. Your logo is the first step in the overall branding of your company. It is the time to invest in market research and your visual identity.  This costs money. This is a worthy investment, because your ‘look’ is the way that you will visually distinguish yourself from others in the market. 

Mistake Number 2 -

Relying Too Much On Trends!

 Trends are cool, they’re fashionable, and you look “with it’. It’s great to follow trends for platforms that change frequently -- - posts, landing pages and the likes. A LOGO, however is here to stay , and so, you need to choose something that transcends ‘passing trends’ and is timeless. Logos stick around for a considerable length of time – they can be refined and refreshed to keep them current, but you have accrued a great deal of ‘equity’ in your logo, so make sure you choose a design that can be consistently displayed, even with ‘tweaks’ along the say. Take a look at the way Google handles this (see examples here). 

Classic is good. Your logo should be like the ‘little black dress.’ It never goes out of style.

Mistake Number 3 -

Using Pixels, Low Resolution Instead of Vectors

Vector graphics is a line art that can be stretched to any size and cannot be blurred. A lot of people create logos using photoshop and gimp or logo automatic app and not vector programs (illustrator, sketch even adobe xd).  Do not rely on pixels - think about the day you'll need that logo for billboards, print, high-resolution videos, or the day you'll need to incorporate changes - a png or an app logo cannot be easily edited once it's done.

The moral of the story here is that the cheapest can also be more expensive!

Mistake Number 4 - Using Stock Images

Aside from its lack of uniqueness and copyright considerations, the image cannot be part of your logo, which needs to have text and give visual focus to your corporate name, without anything to distract. Stock images make you part of the crowd, instead of helping you stand out above it.

Mistake Number 5 - Trust Your Designer

Your company logo should communicate what your company does and what it stands for. It should not reflect one person's personal preferences, like a picture of your dog or a magazine spread that you liked. It's easy for personal opinions to influence the creation of the logo, but be aware that this is always what’s is right for your business. Keep an open mind, leave it to professionals, and trust them instead of micro-managing the project.

 Good designers bring a wealth of experience to the process, and while you might have your own ‘likes’ and ‘dislikes’, remember that your designer is there to interpret your visual needs.  

Would you build a rocket and send it to space? Probably not. It’s the same principle here. Leave the job to a professional.

Mistake Number 6 - Too Complex!

More than once I have heard from clients that they want a logo with loads of different elements, icons and color, none of which has to do with the product you’re trying to market. The multiplicity of elements and colors is distracting, inflexible in its capacity for adaptation and defeats the purpose of a simple but bold design that brings immediate top-of-mind recognition. 

Let's go back to McDonald's. How simple is that big golden arc with the letter “M’ rising from its midst. Ronald McDonald might be their presenter, but the M is their visual identity. Don’t confuse the two. 

 Mistake Number 7 - Multi-Effects

There was a time when effects were cool. Until they weren’t. Multi-effects was a trend which came, and thankfully went, in the late 90’s – and the design world is so much better for it. Shadow-thickening, 3 Dimension, and other similar effects can only ruin your logo, and undermine its timeless character. Fads come and go. Your logo does not. Try to stay as elegant and simple as possible with your logo. This will ensure the relevance and longevity of the design.

Mistake Number 8 - Wrong Font Selection

The font chosen for your logo is critical. You want to choose a font that is legible and can fit into any accompanying graphics.

I have often been asked for a thin handwriting logo in shades of gold on a black background -- but what if you want something light to print on it? Or a very small element?

An illegible logo defeats the purpose of creating a visual identity which stands out. My experience has been that in the end, this lack of versatility of the font chosen by the client can often lead to disappointment, because what they saw in their minds-eye does not translate well to the diverse ‘roles’ that the logo needs to play. 

A logo must be clear and legible.  If you have chosen to go for a special font - try to moderate it in order to give maximum versatility. Don’t make a mish-mash of style, thickness, color, texture. Keep it strong but keep it simple.

Mistake Number 9 - Make Me a Logo Just Like This One!

This is one of the biggest (and often more costly) mistakes in logo design. The internet has brought with it the accessibility to see endless numbers of logos. It’s OK to be inspired by a logo, but there has been a marked tendency to copy existing logos. Not only do you lose your unique brand position by doing this, but you also risk being sued for copyright infringement.

Non-original logos do not garner attention and are often even mocked on social networks and blogs.

Mistake Number 10 – Recieving Limited and not open files

Do not settle for a png file for your logo. Insist on receiving it in several formats-

Pdf, Illustrator, svg. You will need these later on for anything marketing and graphic that you want to do. Without these files, it will be impossible to have a high quality logo.

Once you have paid for a logo design, it belongs to you. The materials are yours, and not the designer’s! Make sure to include this in your agreement, and also to receive all the files in their various formats.