Blog – Your Success

The 2 questions which I always get asked by clients are ‘’what makes a good logo?’’ and “what could make my business stand out more from the competition?’’. So I will share with you my design fundamentals that have been instilled into me over years and years of practice and have become my foundation to each and every project that I work on.

Brand Conception and Production:

It’s easy to think of a logo as the main brand but there are so many more factors to take into account, such as colour, shapes, usage, how the design is going to be shown, how the design Is meant to be shown and many, many more. Most people will design 5-10 logos and choose the first one, because that is the one they put the most time, love and passion into.

When it comes to concept and production, brainstorming your ideas is a crucial part of understanding your brand. So below I have listed a handful of essential fundamentals to look into when it comes to your design projects.

My Design Principles:

Simplicity – This a straight forward principle but I believe it’s the most over looked. Keeping your work simple can make a huge difference in the outcome of the final piece. If your goal is to create a flyer with images and text, make sure your message comes first and don’t be afraid to DELETE what you don’t need.

Balance – The most important part of any design is the balance to the human eye. You may find this a bit strange at first but we naturally look at aesthetically pleasing objects. Objects that are well balanced on paper, on screens and in front of us.

Example:- Let’s take an imaginary logo, if it’s natural diameters are 25mm(2) and we compress or distort the sizing to say 20mm x 35mm, we have now effected the original balance which will make us notice something is wrong with the logo thus destroying the balance.

Shapes – Knowing what shapes mean to the subconscious mind. You don’t have to know the mathematical quadrants, axioms or theorem of your design, just understand that shapes hold power. We as humans have been using shapes since birth and we are subconsciously aware of them.

Examples:- Square: Block shape, bold, structured, dominant – BBC, Domino’s Pizza, Microsoft,

Circles: movement, light, simple, clean, no edges – Enso, Pepsi, Starbucks, NASA

Triangles: Warning, Sharpe edges, direction, growth – FedEx, Google drive, Mitsubishi

Contrast – Knowing your values is an important step to understanding colours, but remember to keep it simple, make sure your design works in black and white first and is able to be printed in different sizes (Balance). That way when you add your values you only enhance your design.

I won’t bore you with a thesis on spectrum relationships. But I will try to leave you with a basic understanding of colour palettes for computers and printers written below.

RGB: Red, Green and Blue monitor displays have a back light that helps make colours vibrant knowing what you see on screen and what you see on paper will always be different.

CMYK: Professional printing normally utilises Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key pigments that blend together to make a colour, CMYK colour normally has a dull flat tone to them, do don’t expect them to be overly vibrant vs your monitor. – (Not including office printers)

Pantones: This is still one of the truest ways of matching colours and inks for print jobs.

Continuity – Always design your items with the future in mind, because knowing where you are looking to take your brand will help guide you on your path. So you’re probably asking yourself how do I add continuity? Its simple, keep major items placed in the same location on all your designed products, this will help your consumers recognise your brand faster.

Example:- If your logo is place in the top left corner of your letter head. It should be in the same location on all other form factors.

So those are my personal key fundamental principles and I hope these principles may help you with your future design projects. Also, just keep in mind if you need a designer, I am just a click away.

Thanks for reading hopefully you found this article helpful if you did please let me know.