If you are a consumer, or a marketer, or a CEO of a company looking for branding, you should be interested in logos. Logos are the centerpiece of a company’s brand image and can tell you a lot about the company. The quality of a logo can tell the consumer how much their image (and customer opinion) means to that company. The effectiveness of a logo can help sell whatever product or service that the company offers. Also, the beauty of a logo is something that the company can be proud of and identify with.

Branding is the most important aspect of a company’s marketing strategy and should be heavily considered. Companies that took their branding lightly during their inception may suffer in the long run. This happens even if their service or product is great, because their logo is unprofessional, confusing, or offensive. Companies with bad logos may not be taken seriously or worse, they may be made a butt of a joke.
There are four principles that make for a great logo design. A great logo must:

• follow solid basic design principles
• be functional
• represent the company
• be unique

We will go over each of these principles in depth.

A Great Logo Must Follow Basic Design Principles

This may be the most obvious necessity for great logos. The logo must be soundly designed and look good. The aesthetic appeal of a logo, or any piece of art or design for that matter, is subjective and relative to a person’s mood when they view the logo. However, there are fundamentals of design that must be followed to ensure that a logo will appeal to anyone.

The fundamentals include, but are not limited to space, color, form, consistency, and clarity. It is recommended that a design professional have some influence on your logo, whether it be redesign or touching up, to ensure basic design principles are followed.

A Great Logo Must Be Functional

Logos are the most important marketing pieces for a company because it must represent that company in many different contexts and still get the message across. A logo may be seen on the web, or on a variety of promotional products such as a brochure, a t-shirt, or on glassware. It could be used on dark backgrounds, on light backgrounds, on textured surfaces, or could be used in various sizes like on an awning or on a postcard. A major indication of a poorly designed logo is graphic effects that can be added in Photoshop like 3D embossing, shadows, glares, or photo imagery. It’s important to know that simplicity does not mean that the logo is missing anything. In fact, to aid in functionality, the logo must be simple.

Read More: http://www.code-interactive.com/thinker/a112.html

But exactly what is branding, anyway? Think of branding as predefining what a company is all about in the minds of its clients. Good branding differentiates your products and services in a positive way that really sticks in the minds of potential customers.

The First Key Element of Branding; Create a Great Logo.

You have given a great deal of attention to your company name and believe it speaks to who you are and what you do. Great! Now you need to wrap a graphic image around that name to carve out a prime piece of real estate in your target customer’s mind. That is exactly what a great logo design can do.

7 Logo Design Tips

Keep in mind that a powerful logo design:
has a strong, balanced image with no little extras that clutter its look;
is distinctive and bold in design, making it easy to see at a glance;
has graphic imagery that looks appropriate for your business;
works well with your company name;
is done in an easy to read font;
communicates your business clearly; and
looks good in black and white, as well as in color.
The Second Key Element of Branding; Create a Distinctive Tag Line.
A tag line is a three to seven word phrase that accompanies your logo. It expresses your company’s most important benefits and/or what you want your customers to remember about working with you. Think of it as the words you want to linger in your target customer’s mind about you and what you have to offer.
Great tag lines appear to be effortlessly created because they just seem to flow. In fact, creating and refining one takes time, just like designing a great logo. The benefits of taking the time to craft a great tag line lie with the tag line’s stickiness. Great tag lines stick in your memory.
Creating a great logo and distinctive tag line are critical in creating a brand that provides the perfect image for your company and great ones just might be memorable enough to give your company the beach front property in the minds of your customers that leaves them thinking only of you.
Source: http://sbinfocanada.about.com/od/marketing/a/brandingks.htm

Partly, the look of your site represents you as the owner and the things showcased in it. It contributes to the audience’s appeal, their trust and satisfaction.

A well designed site attracts more clients. Keeping all things on proper alignment and places makes the site user friendly. Remember that you are selling your products and not the theme

Simplicity goes a long way with regards to designing. It makes your site look professional. Things are easily navigated with a simple and neat design. Limiting the site’s color into 1 to 3 adds sophistication.

Typography is also a big part of a website/webpage. Using web friendly fonts are the best thus you could also use unique fonts just by converting it into images and embedding on the page. Again, limit everything in 1 or 2 or 3 fonts. Remember that we are also to think of uniformity for this adds up neatness. Use readable fonts so do as use colors that are friendly to the eyes. Never use colors that gives our eyes distraction for we don’t want to scare away viewers and clients

To finish this post up, we have different likes and preferences, use what you think is good but never disregard a Designer’s taste and view when it comes on designing webpages and sites. It is always better to give way what most people looks good than what’s yours.

Ciao! God bless!