How to SAVE Yourself from A Bad Logo Design?

Making a business memorable with a good logo design is no secret these days, but seeking the right tools and ways to make a free logo is somewhat tiresome. If you take a chance on asking the internet for how to design your own logo online, it will probably take you to a never-ending list of free online services to make your logo and it would be like taking a deep dive into the ocean to catch a fish.

For instance, try typing Free Logo Design in the search bar and you will come across plenty of websites offering to let you design your own logo for free. Nevertheless, it’s not the amount of free logo maker websites you discover but the incredible challenge is to find one that actually helps.

Let’s suppose you are able to get your hands on a good free logo creator, the question is - would you be able to design your own logo? Do you have the right skills to come up with a great design idea and work around to create an effective identity for your brand? I highly doubt that though.

Who needs a free logo?

Most start-ups tend to seek free design services, in order to save money. However, they overlook the significance of a good logo in the business model. We all have heard this very common quote that "Never judge a book by its cover" but ironically, we live in an era where the scenario is completely different. Especially for start-up businesses, it is very important to represent their services or products in a way that is more appealing and interesting than others. With a number of competitors in the market, your book will definitely be judged by the nice cover you have for it.

How to design your own logo?

The first thing you need to do while starting the process of designing your own logo is 'research'. You need to study your business or brand and what it offers. Secondly, try to get an idea of your target audience. The people who are going to buy your product or avail your services. Thirdly, you can also do some research what other brands of the same sort have as their identity mark.

If you're done with the primary steps, start sketching and taking notes of every small detail, you have gathered. Turning the concept into reality is not going to be an easy task, so just be patient and stay focused.

Until now this was your homework to do. I assume you followed the baby steps and you must be ready to take a plunge into the final phase of free logo design process. It's good if you have the necessary tools, you can start building the logo design on your computer or mac. If you don't have any, you can take help from various online platforms offering free design templates which you can mold or modify according to your need.

Asking a professional for help!

Asking a professional for help is good if things are not looking in good shape as you had planned. A design professional can better understand the ideas in your head and further polish them with his creative skill set. But again, you need to be careful with who you choose for this very important job at hand. The graphic design industry is full of all sorts of designers. Only a good designer can generate the right identity for your brand that would be helpful to win costumers' trust.

Good and bad designers!

A logo design is supposed to represent the brand value with same energy as if you were to tell someone in person about the company and its offerings. That means a logo has to be good enough to do an effective business communication for the brand.

Unfortunately, and surprisingly, there are people who offer you cheap free logo designs in a price as low as $50-$100. If you're paying that low to someone for your new logo design, I'm sorry to say but it’s unlikely that you'd get a quality logo. You can expect this unprofessional behavior of taking these jobs from young designers starving on their last dollar, or someone who's recently installed adobe Photoshop and takes up the challenge to do a lousy job for a brand. Industry experts recommend that you should never go to such a person and always look for proper way of doing things.

On the other hand, if a person doesn't suck at designing and knows how to put more value to a brand through a simple sign or mark, you should get hold of them. Let me share a very important aspect with you. In different parts of the world people speak different language but everyone understands the language of signs. A logo should be designed in such a way that it is timeless and recognizable. That creates the need of good graphic designers.

Final Verdict

If you hire a professional to treat your logo it will lead to the higher creative standards and something good will come into being. It will also save you from a lot of depression, which is not good for your health. Let the real professional creatives to do the magic for you. And do not worry, if you have to spend a little budget for a custom brand identity. Quality services do come with a price, but this would bring a good return on your investment.

Having said all of that I would encourage you to always make a wise decision in regards to your company logo

Fullstop’s Oficial Site | http://fullstop360.com
Fullstop’s Official Blog | Logo Design & Branding Services

*Credits to Fullstop360 for this article.

Links That Can Make Every Designer’s Life Easy

1. Coolors

 

A simple color scheme generator. Very simple, easy to use and share color schemes.

Best alternatives:
Color Hunt
Adobe Kuler
Colorfavs

 

2. Pixabay

 

Due to copywriting violation you should not use photos from the search engine like google, bing etc. Pixabay is royalty free photos portal! Pixabay offers an easy-to-use search feature, the images are absolutely brilliant. that’s what we want.

Best alternatives:
Unsplash
Pexels
Picjumbo

Please Note: You need to locate websites that explicitly define the copyright license of each image. For all the sites listed above, the license is generally pretty easy to find. There’s typically a description of the license on every page or at least a link to a description.

 

3. Fontsquirrel

 

The best part of this website is that even you have full lists of glyphs of each font and you can take a test drive with the way you to enter text to see how it will look in a particular font face.
Best alternatives:
LostType
DaFont
Google Fonts

 

4. Noun Project – Icons for Everything

All the Designers need icons every time, so here is a website that has a huge collection of icons. We can get various formats including vector eg .png, .eps and .svg formats as well.

Best alternatives:
Iconfinder
flaticon
Iconmonstr

 

5. Panda (Google Chrome Extension)

 

If you want to browse multiple inspirational websites at the same time than Panda is Google Chrome extension that fulfills your daily inspiration needs. Panda showcases great design which is recently published on design communities like Dribbble, Behance, DeviantArt etc. Panda is a great thing to stay updated in the design field. 

Best alternatives:

Boredpanda
Muzli
CGfrog

*Be sure to check each website’s license page for specific details.

source: CGF

Graphic Designer : Expectation Vs Reality

A graphic designer, unlike a doctor or an engineer, cannot just give one solution to solve a problem, and may need to offer multiple solutions that may suit the taste of a customer. And yet, still expect revisions and changes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

source: CGF

Mistakes Every Freelancer Makes

We didn't set out to be freelancers because we love dealing with clients, sorting out taxes and taking our financial lives into our own hands, we are freelancers because we love the craft that we do. We're creative people not business people and because of this it's easy to make mistakes.
Here's how you can avoid them in your career.

1. Charging Too Little

This is probably the biggest mistake and that's why it's at number one. The idea was to charge as little as possible for my work with the hopes of that being attractive to potential clients. This actually has the opposite effect. Clients may see you as 'cheap' and someone who provides low quality work.

Solution

It's important to charge what you think you're worth as well as how much you need to live. Here are a few articles about pricing

2. Contracts

Having no contract or formal agreement in place when working with a client can mean you doing more work than you expect to and some clients may take advantage of this. A contract should make everything clear about your services for the client. This means you should spell out everything about your services from payment schedules to the amount of revisions you're willing to do.

Solution

You don't have to be a lawyer to get yourself a contract, there are plenty of templates and samples out there to help you set your terms and conditions for your clients.

3. Knowing When to Say No

Many will argue that the client is always right. Others will argue the opposite. Regardless of this sometimes you need to say no. You may be asked to work less than your regular rate or the client may add tasks to your current work pile. It's good practice to say no to clients that could harm your reputation, try to barter on pricing and companies with a bad reputation.
Before starting work for any client you should research their business. How do they treat their customers? What are their work ethics like? Answering these questions will help you get a better understanding of the project and also give you an idea of what to expect working with them will be like. If you decide to say no, don't regret it - there's plenty of more potential clients.

4. Appealing to Everyone

It makes sense to offer more services to broaden your market. However, focusing on and specialising in one or two services could gain you more clients. This is because you can easily make a name for yourself as the expert in landing page design, for example, but it's much harder to be known as the best web designer. Pick a niche that you love doing and something you're good at.

5. Staying in Touch with Clients

You work so hard to find your clients and then once the work is done, you simply pack up and leave. This is something I did often and probably lost out on a lot of work. The easiest way to stay in touch with past clients is to build an email list that provides your clients with content about your business. Offer discounts to your previous clients and they'll be sure to hire you again.

6. Time Management

Give your client an estimate of how long a project will take, it's easier to break it up in sections and think how long these sections have taken you in the past. That way, you'll keep your clients happy!

7. Marketing Yourself

If you want to find work, you have to go to them and find your clients. Here's how.

Blogging

Probably the most popular way freelancers market themselves is by blogging. Show your potential clients how professional you are by writing about your craft.

Networking

Networking online and offline can gain you a lot of clients as they get a chance to know you before they work with you. Setting up your social profiles, sending email proposals and participating in industry meetups will help you meet potential clients and future colleagues.

8. Working Too Much

As a freelancer, you are the only person in your business and means that you don't get paid time off or other benefits that employees get. This caused you to work everyday all day in fear that you would never have any money and soon burned yourself out. Taking time off for yourself helps you to regain motivation and feel more refreshed to work.

Solution

Many self employed people regularly put earnings into a savings account so that when it comes to take time off for whatever reason, they have the money to do so and not have to worry about losing out on income.

What Mistakes Have You Made?

It's our human nature to make mistakes. If we didn't mess up once in a while, we would never learn so don't feel bad about screwing something up, embrace it!

source: creativemarket

The Ultimate Adobe CC Keyboard Shortcut Cheat Sheet

source: makeawebsitehub

The Psychology of Color

Information for how graphic designers should use color and which colors are appropriate for what purposes.

 source techking

10 Times Graphic Designers Should Say “NO” To Clients

This so happens with the best of us. So never say yes all the time, learn to say “No” when it is needed in the worst conditions. Share the stuff with your other designer friends who have been undergoing the same creepy questions by their clients. Here we go!

source: pixelo