Design Mistake #1 – Designing A Logo In Photoshop
It’s true you know. You’ll learn more from your mistakes and the mistakes of others than you will from advice and suggestions. I wish there was a mistake bank somewhere that I could log into and read to my heart’s content. Read about other people’s tomfoolery and naivette. Because that would equip me to avoid potential disasters in life, at the workplace and in many situations that I would otherwise not spare a thought for. Alas, there is no "mistakes" bank out there. And like everyone else in this world, I have made my share of them.
Starting today, I am going to log the mistakes I have made in my working career. Although none have been catastrophic, I reflect back on them and think "What was I thinking!". It is human to err and learning and evolving from your errors is the most important thing of all. You might have made the same mistakes as me or might have misconceptions about things like I did. In any case, reading about my mistakes will definitely make you a little bit wiser.
Design Mistake #1 – Designing A Logo In Photoshop
The first logo I designed several years ago was in Illustrator and then for many years I steered clear of the application. Earlier this year when I was hired to design a company’s logo, I fired up Photoshop. I did it instinctively because I had been exclusively using Photoshop for the past 8 years and except that first brush with Illustrator, I had no further experience in it. Big mistake!
When I say that I committed a mistake designing a logo in Photoshop, I mean exclusively Photoshop. I did eventually re-create the logo in vector format in Illustrator once it was finalized, but I should have just gone vector all the way. Here is why.
- Photoshop is a raster graphics software and very limited when it comes to image scalability. A logo needs to be in vector format for easy enlargements and reductions without losing pixels and quality.
- Vector files are very compact and small in size as opposed to Photoshop files which tend to be larger. This makes them very easy to transfer, manage and share.
- Even if you design in Photoshop, you will have to convert it to a vector format by re-creating it in a vector software like Illustrator or Coreldraw. So why waste time and effort doing something twice that you could’ve done once and done it well. You also risk not creating it exactly the way you created it the first time around.
At one point in the project, I had all the different logo variations printed out on separate cardstock for all members of the board to review. That went well, with each person having his own set of logo cards to review as I explained each design. But when they wanted to scale the logos up and print them to put up on the whiteboard, it all went downhill. Now if only I wasn’t so intimidated by Illustrator, this big bungle up could’ve been totally avoided.
Having admitted that, I hope prospective and fledgeling logo designers find this an eye-opener if they are planning on using Photoshop. When I googled "designing a logo in Photoshop", it spewed out 345,000,000 results back at me. Apparently a lot, really a lot of people have wrong notions about designing logos.
Have you used non-vector softwares to develop logos? Was it because of lack of knowledge like me or some other reason? Do you have logos designed in Photoshop actually being used by clients? What kind of softwares are you using to design logos? Please leave a comment and share your experiences. Let us all benefit from them.
I actually use vector tools in photoshop when designing logos as most of my stuff is straight for web sites…. But this gives me the opportunity to easily convert to an illustrator file by exporting paths and things… Or I will create the basics in illustrator and import into photoshop (keeping it a vector). It depends on the project.
I worked in large format print for years so I am well aware of the troubles of being provided logos designed in photoshop at web site size
… I became a master at redrawing other peoples logos.
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This is spot on! Many times, I have been working on a design and needed the client’s logo and many times, they send me a jpg!!! I know sometimes people think they only need something “for the web” but a business needs a high quality SCALABLE logo. Great post.
Hi, Sneh,
There actually is a site to share mistakes; it’s called The Mistake Bank and you can find it at http://mistakebank.com. There are over 500 members and 100 or more mistake stories. Yours would fit in perfectly there!
regards, John
I couldn’t agree more. When designing a logo, I always go as basic as possible, concepting in black and white. Then I will go back and add color as necessary. One thing to remember to about designing logos is how it will be used and/or reproduced. Using gradients and special effects won’t always translate well depending on the printing method. So, the simpler the logo, the more versatile it is. Just because a logo utilizes cool Photoshop effects (gradients, bevels, shadows, etc), does not make it a good logo. The most effective and successful logos are one color with little to no effects. Remember that you are helping your client to create a brand. And the brand should be universally recognized. Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, NIKE, Apple and some other huge brands have the most simple (yet most recognizable) logos, and they are only 1 or 2 colors. I do my best to learn from these examples.
Thanks for the link John. What a brilliant concept!
Great post Sneh. I recently wrote about a mistake that I did as well.
http://designinformer.com/dealing-with-your-mistakes/
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You are right that vector rulez when it comes to scaling, etc… But some finetuning and some effects are way easier if not only possible on PS… Though I keep to AI, but yet, sometimes Photoshop can be of great help as well… You just have to know what each application can do better and easier.
I agree with Luke on this: both programs can be useful for logo design. One just needs to be careful about each program’s respective limitations. Thanks for sharing!
I’m new at logo designing. In fact, I’m a freshie. I’m more of a Photoshop user and that’s what I use to edit many images. However, I totally agree with doing logos in Illustrator because no matter how much you stretch the image it won’t pixellate, and that’s really important.
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Yes i am also in agreement on this one…
For me, I have a bad habit of skipping the physical sketching phase, which leads to designing in circles and indeed slow progress, so i am trying to break that habit, but once I boot up the mac I always reach for Illustrator first, to get the logo tuned as nice as possible in black and white, then color, and if it needs further glitz for a website etc, i will simply pull it into photoshop as a smart object. THEN add the whiz-bang elements.
You should never add the “pretty bits” until AFTER you have a bulletproof design.
Luke.
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