The clearest route to having your brand recognised is your logo—customers should see it and instantly connect it to your business or organisation. A logo is way more than just a design or a font. It can help to relay the character or your organisation, creating a snapshot of what drives you and what you offer to clients. With all of that in mind, it’s so important that your logo makes the right impression on your audience and positions your organisation right where it needs to be.
Although having a “do-it-yourself” attitude is often great in the business world, hiring a professional to create your logo is a must for all except perhaps the most design-savvy. The last thing you want is to spend hours creating what you think is the perfect design only to find that it’s not compatible to use on your website or that it doesn’t look crisp and professional on printed materials.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to have input on your logo. You know your business best, after all, and you need to feel comfortable that the logo is accurately representing what you do. Hiring a professional, however, will help you translate your vision into a crisp, professional logo that’s easy to use across a wide swath of applications. Here are the top three reasons that amateur logos will always be amateur, and you can never go wrong with hiring a professional to create your logo.
1. File Suitability
Probably the number one reason that amateur logos will always be amateur is that most non-web designers will create a finished file for their logo such as a .gif or .jpg file type. This can cause problems if your web designer or printer needs your logo in a larger file size, as stretching it will distort the logo and make it blurry or pixelated.
Often if you don’t have professional design software, the program that you’ve used to create your amateur logo may only create the image in that file format, leaving your designer or printer with few options to improve the look of your image. If you want your website or printed materials to look professional, you’ll want your logo to look professional as well. This is easiest to achieve by working with a professional logo designer who will create your logo in a flexible file format so that it will look great no matter the application.
2. Background Check
To make your logo easy to use for a variety of applications, the background of the logo must be transparent. This way, it can be used on top of any colour background without leaving that dreaded white rectangle background that often comes along with amateur logos.
A professional designer can easily remove the background from your logo so that you can easily integrate your logo into other materials both online and in print. This will give your logo that professional touch you’re looking for while also saving you time when you need to send off your logo to be used for promotional or marketing materials.
3. Lost in Translation
Logos are so important for telling the story of a business, and especially for small enterprises, the story of the business can feel like and extension of the story of the owner or founder. Adding a personal touch to your business’ logo can be a great idea if it makes sense in the context of the business’ mission or services, however, adding personal touches that have to do with you personally but tell little about the business can end up confusing potential clients and coming across as unprofessional.
It can be easy to get very attached to a particular logo design or font that appeals to you personally. One of the biggest mistakes in amateur logo making is to jump at the design that appeals to you without considering whether it really works for your purposes. You have to remember that your logo is not necessarily meant to appeal to you personally, it’s meant to appeal to your audience.
Hiring a professional will help you to avoid ending up with an amateur-looking logo. They’ll be able to discern if the image or font is too big or small, the font is easy to read, and whether there is a visual clash happening between any elements of the logo.
Read More: These Common Logo Design Oversights May Be Making Your Business Look Amateur
