Research and Planning: Logo design

Logo design

You should have decided on your charity or issue of choice by now and carried out some research into similar websites.
Your task now is to produce a logo for your chosen charity (remember even if your making a website for an established charity you still need to have designed your own logo)

Tasks for today

You will need to firstly look at some other charity logos, and put them on your blog

Next write a paragraph on what makes a good logo, use your examples to back up your statements I’ve included an edited article by Duncan McAdams on good logo design, it will give you some good advice on what makes an effective logo and may also inspire

you when you come to designing your own logo

WHAT MAKES A GOOD LOGO?
By Duncan MCAdams

When we see the yellow letter "M" against a red background, we all instantly know what it stands for. Such is the power of a logo.
- So what makes a good logo?

1. A good logo is easy to read and comprehend. It looks good on everything from a business card to a humongous billboard. Technically speaking most logos have a simple font, no more than two colours and are a rectangular in shape - square logos are difficult to use.

2. A good logo is well-coordinated. It uses a supporting mark and strap line to add to the logo, expanding its potential. Does your business have this?
The parts of a logo to consider are 1) a mark 2) a company name and 3) possibly a strapline. Each part supports the other. For example McDonalds has the mark of the golden arches, the name McDonalds and the current strap line of "Its Mactime now”. Effective, memorable, easy to read, and identifiable (in any country). The perfect logo? I think it's getting close.

3. A good logo can be adapted for use across all media effectively and remain distinct and recognizable. Your logo will be applied in countless different ways - from letterhead to tee-shirts, truck livery to packaging, invoices or on-site signage, print ads to PowerPoint presentations. A good logo is consistent across the whole company. Will it work everywhere? Or is it a tricky piece of artwork that is difficult to use, or is so bland it gets lost when used?

4. A good logo utilizes a simple font that is easy to read and duplicate. If it's distinctive enough, the public will associate the font with your company. (You could recognise the McDonald's "M" font, even without any colour).

5. As a general rule, two colours is enough for your logo. It all comes down to expense, especially when reproducing your logo on business cards, letterheads and other forms of printing. It's not a worthwhile business expense to spend money on more than two colours, as you will not see any return on your investment.

6. Rectangular shapes work best, because our eyes find it easier to look at rectangles than squares. Rectangles also work better on the web and TV, so why not start from a winning position.

7. Don't go changin'! For some reason, companies often have a myriad of different versions of their logo that barely resemble each other. This is poor marketing strategy; it confuses the consumer (who prefers consistency) and your logo loses impact.
Hopefully you’re itching to get designing your own logo now! your next task is to produce 4 to 5 rough designs for logos, this can be done as sketches on paper of straight on Photoshop, don’t worry about making them look polished its the idea that we are bothered about.

Finally do some market research on which of your logos is most suitable for your charity/group and then get it all put on your blog and in your file!

Tasks Summary

1. Find examples of logos for groups or charities similar to your own.
2. Using your examples as reference write a paragraph on what makes a good logo.
3.Create 4 to 5 rough designs for your logo
4. Carry out market research to find the most suitable logo (you could use facebook to do this)
5. Put it all on your blog.

Main Task: Charity website design.

YOU MUST FINISH YOUR PRELIMINARY WEBSITE BEFORE DOING ANY OF THE FOLLOWING TASKS.

• You will need to screen grab and post pictures of your finished school/collage website onto your blog.
• Write a paragraph to go with this post evaluating how successfull your design is or is'nt. Ensure you relate your thoughts to the target audience.
  

MAIN TASK: Planning and Research.

Can you please make sure that all the blog posts made that include and research or planning have the words MAIN TASK, Research and planning in the post title.

for example, MAIN TASK:Research and planning: logo design

Your first main Project task is to decide on your websites purpose what charity or issue you will address, You may use an already established charity or make up your own, the only rules are that you must design a logo for your charity (yes that means you cant just use a pre-made logo!)

This weeks tasks!

you need to research into your charity/ issue what do they do/ who do they help or inform us about?

what current similar websites are their currently out there? analyse a minimum of 4

websites, you've done this before for the school websites so this isn't anything new for you.

who is your target audience? and what do you need to do to appeal to your target audience in your designs?


IMPORTANT

Can you all make sure that all of your work has a full explanation of why you have included it into your blog/file. it will not impress the moderator if he see's work without an reason behind it. so when you analyse your websites just include a brief explanation of what you've done so for website analysis just add a short paragraph saying something like;

'To start my planning into designing my charity website I have looked at some similar websites from other charities and analyzed the features and conventions of them in an effort to help me design my own web pages.'

You should do this for all of your work, it adds a easily followable line through all of your work that will make it much harder for a moderator to mark you down