- Oct 28, 2015
- 2 min read

What is Good Logo Design?

This may be common knowledge to most of today's designers, but not all clients know what "good" design is. What do I mean by "good" design, since art is in the eye of the beholder? A good logo is easily recognizable, timeless, practical, simple in form, and conveys the right message for the company. It needs to be able to be versatile. Can it be printed in one color? Printed small or large? Printed on different backgrounds? For those that aren't aware of these bad/outdated logo design trends, I hope this will be educational. For those are aware, hopefully it will be entertaining! If used, these logo trends don't allow your logo to be distinct and original. The only attention they will gain is an eye roll from their viewers. The Patch I get requests for logos all the time that end up being a piece of complicated artwork within a shape, and the company or business name written within the shape. This is not a logo, it's a patch. And a patch is not a logo. Papyrus and Comic Sans This should be a given. But retire these fonts. Forever. Just delete them from your system. Let's go ahead and add Curlz and Hobo to that.

Everything. In. Cursive While we're at it, cursive and script fonts were not made to be all capitalized. You can't read a script in all caps. Don't make your customers struggle to read your logo! The Green Leaf Yes. We get it. Your company is a "green" company. With more and more companies going the green, natural, or holistic route, this is such a common icon that is now overused. There are other ways to symbolize your company's importance of being green, starting with color choices. The Meaningless Swoosh The swoosh has been used, and it works for one logo, and that's Nike. Stick a random swoosh with some text and call it a logo, and you're creating a forgettable, meaningless icon for your business.

Excited Stick People The celebrating stick people with their hands in the air is another overused icon. I'll have some of what they're having! The Drop Shadow Insert the dreaded "make it pop" comment. The drop shadow takes away from the logo's versatility and simplicity. It makes it cumbersome, and more difficult to adjust for merchandise and printing. There are other ways to create a 3D aspect without using the drop shadow tool. Distorted Logos should never be stretched or distorted out of their intended aspect ratio. It cheapens the look of the logo. And it drives designers crazy.