You’re ready to begin a new design, video, or creative project. Your design firm asks you for your brand assets. You have no idea what you have, where it’s located, or what to even send them. It’s not your fault. You aren’t a designer. The creator of the original logo didn’t supply you with all the necessary assets to make that logo work in the real world. Doing these three things right will save you headaches in the future.
Make sure your logo works in multiple colors.
Everybody loves a nice colorful logo. Rich with nice gradients and fancy details that look really cool when animated. But what happens if you need a cut vinyl sign, an embroidered shirt, an engraved beer glass - or whatever else you can think to slap a logo on?
It’s important to keep in mind that that your new logo design should be flexible enough to work in a variety of applications. That includes everything from rich animations to something as simple as a single-color screen print.
Which brings us to the next point.
Make sure your logo works in real-life.
How often do you plan on using your logo in the center of a plain white piece of paper? Probably not often.
Ask your designer to show you what it will look like in a few different real-world applications. If your primary business is an e-commerce website, you'll need a logo that works well on a navigation bar on multiple screen sizes. If you’re a restaurant owner, it might be important to see how your logo would look imprinted on a napkin, coaster, or menu.
You’ll be surprised how taking the time to do this influences the finished product (and always for the better.)
Set up the files for reproduction.
Are the single-color versions of your new logo actually single color?
Are the PMS colors included - and then - have the designers supplied the RGB and CMYK breakdowns of those colors?
Another thing to keep in mind here are fonts. You think about fonts all the time, right?
We are constantly receiving logos from clients where the original designer didn’t create outlines around the font in Illustrator. If we don’t already have the font, it means we have to spend additional time to either track down the original creator or have the client purchase the font to fix their logo.
Most people don’t think about these things, but ensuring they’re set up right in the beginning will save you time and money down the road.
Make sure you have all of your brand assets, not just the logo.
Have you ever taken your logo file and discovered it won’t work on a large printed piece? How about Google searching your own logo on the internet just to paste onto a document or provide to a designer? How did that turn out? Were you happy with how it looked?
If you’re spending money on the visual cornerstone of your whole brand, it’s critical that you demand your designer supply all the formats of your logo.
At Mr. White Creative we go through a detailed process for creating every format of a logo that might be needed. Formats for print, web, etc and we save them labeled in a way that’s easy for you to understand. If you ever work with another designer, need to send your logo to a media or PR agency, or even supply assets to an online distributor—we like to make sure you have what you need.
Make sure your designer does the same for you.
Once it’s all said and done, make sure you get all those assets packaged up in a single zip file. Keep it somewhere you can find it. Back it up on Dropbox or something. That way if anyone else ever needs access to it, all you have to do is send them a link and they’ll have every version of your logo they’ll ever need.
It’ll save you money and headaches in the long run.
In Conclusion
A really well-designed logo sets the visual direction of every brand, but it won’t do you any good if you can’t put it to work in the best way possible. As you continue to grow your business, your logo needs to be able to continue working hard for you in ways you haven’t even thought about yet.
Following these simple steps is a great way to make sure your logo is as versatile as it is attractive.