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- Criterion 1: it reads at 16 pixels
- Criterion 2: it works in a single colour
- Criterion 3: it has a shape, not just a colour
- Criterion 4: it costs a reasonable amount to print
- Criterion 5: it stands apart from the competition
- Criterion 6: it does not depend on a trend
- Criterion 7: it comes with usage rules
- What the process looks like, briefly
- The last check
Most conversations about logos get stuck at “I like it / I don’t like it”. That is a dead end, because taste cannot be argued. The criteria below can be checked, and that makes the decision far simpler.
Criterion 1: it reads at 16 pixels
The first size at which your logo appears in real life is not the website header, but the browser tab icon or a profile picture. Shrink it to 16 pixels. If it turns into a blob, the fine detail is doing nothing for you.
Practical test: print it at 1 cm and look at it from a metre away.
Criterion 2: it works in a single colour
Stamps, engraving, foil, one-tone screen printing, an institution’s fax. A logo that loses its identity in black and white is a logo that depends on a gradient, not on a shape.
Check it in black on white, white on black, and white over a busy photograph.
Criterion 3: it has a shape, not just a colour
The hardest test: ask someone who saw it once to draw it from memory the next day. It does not have to be exact, but the silhouette should be recognisable. If all they remember is “it was blue”, the logo has no shape of its own.
Criterion 4: it costs a reasonable amount to print
This is where a designer who has worked in print differs from one who has only worked on screen. The number of colours directly drives the cost of printing and merchandise. A subtle gradient looks good in a presentation and becomes expensive or impossible on embroidery, on a pen or on a box.
Practical rule: there must be a single-colour version that behaves well on any surface.
Criterion 5: it stands apart from the competition
Put it on a page next to the logos of five direct competitors. If it disappears among them, the problem is not the execution but the direction. Many industries have visual clichés: a tooth for dentistry, a leaf for eco, a blue circle for technology. You can use them, but then you have to bring something of your own.
Criterion 6: it does not depend on a trend
A good logo lasts ten years without a redraw. Fashionable effects age fastest: long shadows, elaborate gradients, seasonal typefaces. Simplicity ages slowest.
An example from my portfolio: the symbol for Visit Cluj, a heart containing the silhouettes of two cathedrals, was drawn a long time ago and is still in use today, unchanged.
Criterion 7: it comes with usage rules
A logo delivered as a single file ends up, within two years, stretched, recoloured and placed on backgrounds where it cannot be seen. Proper delivery means: vector and raster files, horizontal and vertical versions, a monochrome version, minimum clear space around it, a minimum size and a short list of what is not allowed.
What the process looks like, briefly
- Brief: what the company does, who it speaks to, what it does not want to communicate.
- Research: what competitors do, which clichés exist in the field.
- Sketches on paper, in black and white. Colour comes last, not first.
- Two or three genuinely different directions, not ten variations on one idea.
- Refinement of the chosen direction and testing at small sizes.
- Delivery with all files and the usage rules.
The last check
A good logo is not the most spectacular one, but the one that does its job for years, on any surface, at any size. If it passes the seven criteria above, personal taste becomes the last check rather than the first.
Need a new identity, or a review of your current one? Write to me.
