A well chosen and professionally designed logo can make the perfect addition to just about any blog. On the other hand, a poorly chosen logo, or one that was designed by someone without the skills to do, can easily do more harm than good. This is because despite their small size, logos are complicated beasts and there are many potential mistakes that can be made when choosing one. Should you want to boost the quality of your blog, rather than degrade it, make sure that you keep the following tips in mind when making your choice.

You Should Love It

If you consider yourself to be a hard working blogger, chances are your blog is something that you work on every day. When you choose a logo, it’s important to keep this fact in mind. The logo that you choose will be something that you look at on a daily basis, potentially for years to come. Therefore don’t accept anything less than a logo you love.

Your Readers Should Love It

While it’s important for you to love your logo, it’s even more important that other people like it. If your blog has enough traffic, you should create a poll and place it in a prominent position on your blog. The poll should simply ask your readers to rate your new logo on a scale of one to ten. If you’re readers don’t like it, you’ll probably have to let it go. Friends opinions can also be valuable but only if those friends belong to your blogs target audience.

It Should Match The Rest of your Blog

Many bloggers make the mistake of getting that perfect logo designed but failing to account for one thing, their blogs existing color scheme. It doesn’t matter how stylish or sophisticated a particular logo is if it clashes with your sites existing look. Therefore, always include this information when getting a logo designed. It should also go without saying that you need to decide upon a permanent color scheme for your site before you even consider getting a logo designed.

Forget DIY Logos

There are many types of DIY that can end up costing you money rather than saving it and logo design is a perfect example. Unless you are a skilled graphic designer, the design of your blogs logo is something that you are going to have to outsource. A logo might sound like a simple thing to create, but there’s a reason that graphic designers are always in hot demand.

Avoid Stock Images

Another foolish way to try to save money on your blogs logo is to use a stock image from one of the many stock image sites. Although such images can lead to beautiful logos for practically nothing, their low price is a result of the fact that you will not own exclusive rights to the image. How is your logo going to stand out from the crowd when it is based on a commonly used image?

Check it in Different Sizes

Professionally designed logos come in the form of vectors. The primary benefit of vectors is that they can be made bigger and smaller with next to no degradation in quality. They are therefore the perfect choice for logos. I bring this up because it’s important to be aware of the fact that your blogs logo is likely to be used in many different places and therefore, in many different sizes. And just because a logo looks great in one size, that doesn’t mean that it will look great in others. Therefore never choose a logo without first checking how it looks in a few different sizes.

Aim to Stand Out

Although many people enjoy the fact that a logo makes a blog look significantly more professional, the primary purpose of a logo is always going to be to increase brand awareness. You want the logo that you choose to make your blog more memorable. The only way to do so is to find a logo that looks unique. If you don’t think that a particular logo is unique enough, you should always keep looking.

Don’t Confuse New Visitors

Finally, a well chosen logo can help you to illustrate what your blog is all about. A poorly chosen one however, can easily confuse first time visitors. While you don’t necessarily need to choose a logo that is directly related to your blogs niche, you do need to avoid using one that hints towards a different niche. You should therefore either choose a logo that is related to your blogs content or one that is completely neutral.

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29 Comments

  • Richard, July 8, 2012 @ 4:49 am Reply

    Great tips for creating a logo. I usually have a logo created for me as an afterthought and it never turns out like I expect. When you put it this way, I can see the importance of having a unique logo which goes well with the rest of the theme.

    • Eric, July 8, 2012 @ 6:48 pm Reply

      @Richard: Most big companies design their websites and other marketing material ‘after’ the logo is designed. Logo is the ultimate brand identity and any blogger who is trying to make it big shouldn’t ignore it.

  • Nimsrules, July 8, 2012 @ 11:44 am Reply

    ‘Check the logo in different sizes’, this is why exactly I told you to why I prefer Illustrator that being a vector based software so that your logo doesn’t get pixelated while being scaled.

    Btw, I love your new logo, the colour combination matches with the scheme of your blog.

    • Eric, July 8, 2012 @ 6:51 pm Reply

      If you are planning to EVER go for offline advertising, a vector logo becomes mandatory. Most logos won’t look good when they are stretched to fit on a huge billboard.

  • Shalu Sharma, July 8, 2012 @ 2:22 pm Reply

    You know Logos makes all the difference, when a visitor comes to a site, the first thing they see is the logo, banner. Visual impact is the most powerful phenomenal in website design. Forget a DIY logo indeed, get it done by a pro.

    • Eric, July 8, 2012 @ 6:54 pm Reply

      @Shalu: You are right. Most eye-tracking studies would probably prove what you are saying. Left top area is normally reserved for logos and it’s seen by a LOT of people.

      I am not against DIY logo if you have good design skills. But most webmasters are not designers and they should let a pro work on the logo.

      • Shalu Sharma, July 9, 2012 @ 1:58 pm Reply

        Hello Eric, I agree, if you can get it done by a professional that’s well and good. Alternatively, if the blogger knows how to produce a good logo/banner then that’s even better. If you look at my site, I had it done by a designer and it worked out well. Many bloggers have said that they have liked it. So indeed logo is one of the single most deciding factor for a visitor, if they want to stay on the site or not.

        • Abhi, July 9, 2012 @ 8:27 pm Reply

          Hey Shalu,

          What do you think about the current logo?

          I made it a few days back.

          • Shalu Sharma, July 9, 2012 @ 8:49 pm

            @ Abhi, to be honest, its good. I like. One point though, the “O” of OD is not round. But overall its a good logo. You might consider using small letters, just a thought.

  • Imran, July 8, 2012 @ 5:14 pm Reply

    That is really essential article that every designer should read. It is true that it should match rest of your blog design. Understanding of what logo is about, how it works, accuracy as well as effectiveness of a logo are some of the fundamental principal of logo design. First impression last forever.

  • Eric, July 8, 2012 @ 6:55 pm Reply

    @Imran: I think my target audience included both bloggers and designers. Most designers probably already understand how to design a good logo, it’s the bloggers who need to realize the importance of a good logo.

    I agree, first impressions indeed last forever.

  • Chris, July 9, 2012 @ 3:37 pm Reply

    Logo is important, but more important are layout and content of the blog 🙂
    @Eric – thanks for sharing

    • Abhi, July 9, 2012 @ 8:28 pm Reply

      Well, then what do you think about the layout and logo of this blog, Chris?

      😀

      • Chris, July 9, 2012 @ 9:27 pm Reply

        I like logo and layout of this blog. For me only background colour isn’t “clear”. It should be white or something lighter than current colour (IMHO of course 😉 ).

  • Rajeel KP, July 13, 2012 @ 5:34 pm Reply

    I have tried this logo designing thing, And now I know that It’s not for me.

    Any way, Great tips Dude !

  • Eric, July 13, 2012 @ 8:29 pm Reply

    @Rajeel: I didn’t want to discourage bloggers / webmasters from designing. You should keep trying. You might be the next professional others hire. 😉

  • Jason Mathes, July 15, 2012 @ 9:54 pm Reply

    LOL believe it or not? I paid 5 bucks for mine and I am quite pleased on how it turned out! Fiverr is awesome!

  • Charles Daniels, July 16, 2012 @ 12:15 am Reply

    I’m also a big fan of making sure you have your logo done as a vector style. Hopefully some day you’re going to need to blow it up to 8 foot banner size. Having it already as a eps or ai vector file is going to make that easy breezy.

  • Eric, July 16, 2012 @ 6:54 am Reply

    @Charles: Most companies and bloggers miss that. Your logo HAS to look good in small sizes (business card) as well as on huge banners.

    I am glad you brought up this point again.

  • saha, July 17, 2012 @ 5:19 pm Reply

    Very informative post. Some important tips for creating perfect logo. For me most important is that logo should match the rest of Blog.

    • Abhi, July 17, 2012 @ 6:57 pm Reply

      Hi Saha,

      Thanks for your comments, good to see you again on my blog.
      I hope you did see the giveaway.

  • Amit Shaw, July 18, 2012 @ 2:53 pm Reply

    Hi,

    Creating logo should be outsourced in my view. Let the experienced do it for you. Spending some bucks on this won’t harm when you a bigger objective on your mind. All are not capable of designing logos. A logo should be unique and must reflect the website’s/blog’s motto, to the extent possible.

    Amit from iTechCode

    • Eric, July 18, 2012 @ 7:14 pm Reply

      @Amit: I am glad we are on the same page here. If you have the skills you can design it yourself too. I prefer to let the expert do their work. Almost all businesses of decent size don’t their accounting and audits in-house, why should company’s face – a logo be a DIY job?

      For bloggers logo is often what visitors will remember. Do you remember the outrage when TechCrunch redesigned their logo? 🙂

  • Gary, August 15, 2012 @ 8:29 am Reply

    I always say you should pay to have it done. A logo can either make or break a website or blog. I have a few sites that I am getting ready to get a new logo for. One of them should actually be going up tomorrow. :]

    • Eric, August 15, 2012 @ 8:34 am Reply

      @Gary: All the best with your new website. I like the probloggingtips logo, did you also try the vertical alignment of letters? The blog definitely needs some images 😀

  • Gary, August 16, 2012 @ 6:42 am Reply

    No, I don’t think I tried a vertical one. I had created a logo contest and got many entries. That was the best one out of all of them. I am really not even set on the theme of the blog to be perfectly honest with you. And I am going to be working on some images here very soon. As you can tell it’s still in it’s infancy.

    When I got it a little over a month ago it was a PR0 and then after the Google update I had brought it clear up to a PR3. So I am pretty excited about that.

    I have still not got the logo up for the other site quite yet. I will come back and let you know when I do. I think I actually like the logo for this other site I am talking about. I am just waiting for the Twitter Avatar and Twitter background to be finished and then I will install them all.

    • Eric, August 16, 2012 @ 8:02 am Reply

      @Gary: Logo contests can result into great designs sometimes. I hope you took the PSD/svg file from your designer. I missed that part for years and realized it’s importance when I wanted to get business cards printed for the first time.

  • Gary, August 16, 2012 @ 8:07 am Reply

    Yeah, I got the .psd. I always make sure that is clear in every contest. I used to do some small design work, so I am familiar with those kinds of things.

    It took me a very long time to find a blog theme. I never really did fall in love with one. So I settled with that one. Settling is never a good thing. Maybe, one of these days I will have the money for a custom theme.

  • Gaori Agrawal, August 29, 2012 @ 11:53 pm Reply

    A good logo increases the recall value of your site. Given the huge number of sites, this sure gives you an edge over others.
    I got a logo made sometime back but was just not happy with it. So, I decided not to use it.
    After all, I guess, not having a logo is better than a bad logo!

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