Logo Design Checklist

Every professional logo design company you work with will require a certain amount of preliminary information to get the logo design process off the ground.

The following is a list of important questions you need to answer before ordering a logo. 

Any information that you can provide to the logo designers is much appreciated and will improve the odds that you end up with a great logo design.

What is the image you want your company to portray?

• Casual
• Conservative
• Cutting Edge

What type of logo are you interested in?

• Text
• Iconic
• Graphical
• Combination
• Clip Art 
• Not sure

NOTE: Complex graphical style logos are not an option at the lower priced logo design packages.

If you are unsure about the difference between logos please read my article: Types of Logos

Future usage of logo: You need to consider the following

How will you market your logo?

• Yellow pages
• Faxes
• Embroidered on polo shirts
• Business Cards

Note: You need to know how your logo will be used to help your logo designer determine what type of logo will work best in your situation. By choosing an extremely complex graphical logo you will have to be aware of the technical drawbacks. Embroiders may not be able to stitch your logo.

Be ready to modify your ideas to suit the needs of your logo based on the way it will be used.

How many colors do you want your logo to be?

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4 color process
• Not sure

Color issues

• What are your company colors?
• Too many colors. When I say too many colors I mean too many spot colors. 4 color process can reproduce the colors of the rainbow. The more specific spot colors you use the more expensive your printing jobs will be.
• Be careful about web colors that can't be produced.
• It is usually cheaper and easier to use 4 color process than spot colors

Size issues/Aspect ratios

You want to maximize your logos reproduction possibilities.

How you decide to use your logo in marketing will influence the size of the logo. Extra tall or extra wide logos present difficulties in magazine or yellow pages marketing.

What name will be on your logo?

Will you use your full business or personal name, a shortened version, or an acronym?

Tag line

• Do you want a tagline?
• Do you need a tagline?

A too long tag line is difficult to impossible to read at small sizes. Better to go without a tag line than have one that can't reproduce well at the print shop. Seek legal advice to make sure you aren't infringing on someone's copyright.

Tell us about your company and the kind of logo you are thinking about:

• Do you have a well established company?
• Are you a startup company?
• Do you have an office or factory?
• Are you a service provider? 
• Can you start us out with any design pointers that you have in mind?
• Are there certain types of logo designs that you DON'T like?
• Can you provide us with a website address of a logo that caught your eye?
• Did you see any logos in our gallery that are appealing to you?

Briefly describe your target audience:

• Who are your customers or prospects?
• Are you a business to business or a business to consumer company?
• Are your customers a particular gender or age group?
• For example: Are your clients pre-school kids for your clown magic show or are they

What are your immediate logo needs?

• logo for a new company
• new logo for an existing company
• logo plastic surgery (doctor up / fix an existing logo)

What is the feel or style that you would like your logo to represent?

Consider what your competitors are doing and how you want to appear to your target audience.

• high tech
• formal/corporate
• contemporary
• casual
• industrial
• antique
• kids

Do you have any font requirements?

If you have a specific font you want to use the designers need to know this in advance.

What are some ways you are planning to use your logo?

There are multiple ways that you can use your logo. Is there a primary way, like the internet for instance? If so, there are different design considerations that need to be applied.

• Internet
• Print
• Both

Conclusion:

I hope this logo design checklist of preliminary questions has been helpful. Armed with the answers to these questions you will avoid most of the early problems that crop up in the logo design process.

If you would like this checklist in PDF format click the following link:

Logo Design Checklist PDF

(The PDF is inside a zip file so you will need a zip utility to open it.)

Next article: How to Choose a Logo Design Company.