Kerry's Headshot

So I’m going to give you a real handy bit of advice. Don’t worry about a logo until you can afford to get professional help.  You don’t really need a logo getting started.  Your business name is enough.  Your business name and a photograph will take care of almost all of your marketing media needs.

For the photograph, use your headshot.  These days the face shot is more the norm, so use your face shot. (That’s a close up head shot).   Not a picture of your product, not a cool picture of a peaceful landscape, a picture of you.

Why use your picture?  You’re trying to build a business. You want people to buy something from you – from YOU. So put yourself out there and let your potential customers see who you are.  Who knows? You might get to be famous and strangers will recognize you in public. That should be good for business.

If you absolutely MUST create a logo, then keep these points in mind.

• Keep it simple.
• Don’t use clip art! If you can’t be unique, wait until you can afford to hire professional help.
• Design it in black and white first. Now reverse the colors. Does it still work?
• Once it looks good in black and white, then add color. Once you’ve added color, convert it to grayscale, print it out and look at it from across the room. It you can’t read it, re-do it until you can.
• Be practical.  Keep the special effects to a minimum. No drop shadows, neon glows, or layers. One good test is, will it covert to a reasonable favicon?

Oh, one thing I forgot to mention. Make sure you’re designing your logo to appeal to your ideal customer. If you’re a Goth skateboarder selling a product to a stay-at-home-mom, chances are the graffiti font and grunge background aren’t going to work for her.

The reality of the situation is you are going to ignore my advice and go ahead and do it yourself. At least this time.

To save you, and whoever you use to turn your design into something tangible, a lot of aggravation I am creating a series of tutorials to lead you through some of the tricks and traps you might encounter.

A few general rules:

• Don’t use “nephew art” unless your nephew is really a graphic designer or sign maker.
• I don’t care if your company colors are red and black, don’t use red lettering on a black background or black on red. It may look great on your monitor but it doesn’t work in real life.
• The colors you see on your monitor and what you’ll get from your printer or sign maker will rarely match.
• The colors that come out of your home printer will not match what comes from your commercial printer. It probably won’t match what you see on your monitor either.
• Pretend like you never heard of Microsoft Publisher. Don’t use it for any of these projects. Ever!

There will be more specific rules in each tutorial. It’s my intent to give you the tools you need to create files that your commercial printer and sign maker can use with minimal editing. This saves them time and saves you money.

Remember, the reason you’re doing this yourself is to save the money, so spend the time and effort to do it right.