Don’t use too many colors

Designers often assume a multi-colored logo draws attention, attracts eyeballs and look cute. Unless your product is meant for small kids or related to colors, don’t fall for such mistake. It may make your brand look amateur and low profile. Too many colors also do not appear great when printed. Know about colors, which come out well on print. There are many colors which look great on screen, but may not appear that great on paper, refrain from using them. Use one or two colors. If you have a corporate color for your brand, maintain that in your logo.

Abbreviations may not work always

Often people love to abbreviate their brand names in logo. Seeing some leaders doing the same, don’t blindly follow them. If it’s a long brand name and complicated to remember and pronounce, abbreviation may work. Don’t forcibly shorten your brand name with the initials. If you have a nice brand name and the full name sounds good, don’t unnecessarily curtail it short with the initials and call it ‘AP’, ‘DRL’ and the like. You may get tempted to play with initials in logo. But a full name may look good with a nice typeface. If you still insist on abbreviation, make sure it justifies your brand and remains unique. You may write full name below that.

Does it match the brand?

At times, designers craft logo which are absolutely stunning but don’t match the brand and the product category. Don’t make such mistakes. A formal place like an educational institution or a financial institution cannot have a funky and too colorful logo. It will dilute its importance. Choose a typeface which looks formal and matches importance of the brand. Be careful when you select color for them. It has to bring forth the corporate look. Similarly a brand for kids can’t look dull and too formal. There you can play with fonts, colors and elements. Don’t get too tempted with your creativity and overlook the brand. Know what the brand is all about and design logo accordingly.

Avoid these few mistakes and let your logo do lot of talking.

Too many visual elements

Often designers assume a logo should visually convey what the brand is all about. They often think if it’s a fine dining restaurant brand, its logo should visually depict that by including visual elements like a fork and knife or chef’s hat. But it’s not necessary. Don’t force yourself to include such visual elements within a logo. Include visual elements only when they fulfill the purpose, match with typography and don’t look too much stuffed forcibly. A logo may still look very appealing and eye grabbing without any visual element. Visual element need not be an object or literally what your brand is all about. It can be abstract too, but with reasoning behind it, conveying the brand promise.

Don’t fall for italic fonts

Quite often designers fall in love with calligraphic italic form of fonts. But, such fonts come with their own limitations. They are hardly legible from a distance and specially keeping in mind when print outputs are not of great quality. Such fonts also do not go with every category of product, may be doing justice for perfume brands, lifestyle brands but hardly match with an educational institution’s logo. Don’t fall for such fonts unless you are confident about them and it matches with the product category in hand.

Don’t make it look fine only when big

Designers often get tempted to put too many elements in a logo, make them multi-colored and as a result clutter the entire logo. They forget it may look fine only when they are projected big, but when compressed the logo may look very confusing and not readable. There will be occasions when you will have to print your logo in really small size, in a corner of the documents like envelope, writing pad, letter head, calendar. If your logo is not clear enough in such a case it may get totally unnoticed. So make sure your logo is clear and distinct even when small. Key to such clarity is simplicity. Keep your logo distinctive yet simple.