Dee
What do you do?? as you seem to know a good bit about designing logos
See my last note about a company that I mentioned LogoDesignTeam.com
What you said is pretty much what they mentioned on their website - word for word.
There can be one problem with designing your own logo, you become way too attached to your creation
In another forum a photographer carefully spent hours of time designing his own logo which he was very proud of, but the forum hated. He finally went to a professional and wound up with an excellent logo quite different from the one he designed.
I'm glad he turned out to be flexible enough to embrace the new logo, as this was for a brand new photography venture in a different state.
However, it's a lot of fun to play with designing a logo and some photographers do quite well at it, but most logos are designed in a vector program, not a raster program
Ian408's comments about your logo looking good tiny and large are quite valid. We often made 3 in-house versions of a client's logo -- one simplified for small ads and business cards, a "normal" logo, and we'd tweak letter spacing for the extra large logo (for building signs, banners, etc.).
If you plan to do any print advertising you'd better be sure to have a black and white version of your logo that works, as well as a grayscale version (if applicable). And if you print in color be aware that the more colors you use the more you will have to pay, which is why you should design your logo in CMYK and not "spot" colors.
If you have a professional work on your logo be sure to get a black version, a reverse version (white to go on dark colors), grayscale (if applicable to your design), CMYK and an RGB version. The CMYK and RGB should match as closely as possible.
The black or white version of your logo would be used for local newspaper ads. You use the black, white or grayscale for black and white ads in a magazine. Your CMYK logo would be used for a color ad in a brochure, magazine, etc.
Some newspapers now print in color and you can use your CMYK logo there. Your rgb logo is for web use. All these advances, by the way, make it very difficult for graphic designers as line screens differ. Why worry about line screen? Well the courser the line screen 65 or 85 for instance, the less fine detail your logo will have especially at a small size, while at a magazine's 133 line screen your logo will be nice and sharp with plenty of detail.
Be sure to ask for an editable eps versions of your logos that can be opened in the vector software you currently use. This way you can make small tweaks if you need to, or so that you can make up your own black, white, grayscale, CMYK and RGB versions as you need them (if not supplied by the designer).
If you can honestly say your logo will only appear on your website or the internet, you can forget most of what I said, except for thinking about how small your logo can be and still look good.
Remember, you might want to make note cards, t-shirts, etc. using your logo and -- try not to pick something so trendy it will look outdated in a couple of years.
While I'll agree that most people should look beyond their "standard" computer fonts, I don't recommend picking something so wild, it's unreadable.
Your logo should also "go" with your area of photography. If you shoot people, choose a people friendly logo, if you are into race cars, pick something wild and zippy. I don't believe one should pick "frilly" and super feminine fonts if you are doing wedding photography, (for example) stick with something clean and easy to read.
Comments
Anyone evry have any dealings with this logo design company?
http://www.logodesignteam.com/
$149
5 logo designs with unlimited revisions
100% guarantee
Providing file types: .eps (Vector Files), .tiff, .psd and .jpg
Michael
What do you do?? as you seem to know a good bit about designing logos
See my last note about a company that I mentioned LogoDesignTeam.com
What you said is pretty much what they mentioned on their website - word for word.
Michael