Save Yourself Trouble by Using a Simple Logo Design

So whether you are running an online blog or video gaming channel on YouTube, your logo is a statement and something you want to stand out because if you become popular enough you can be instantly recognized just by the logo of your brand or persona you are using online.  This article is to help you decide what type of logo to make and I encourage you to create a few samples with a Free Logo Maker until you get the design you are looking for.

You see when I started DragonBlogger.com back in 2008 I was just thinking it would be cool to use my new tattoo I got as my site logo, and I did just do that and wrote a post how I turned my tattoo into the logo for Dragon Blogger back then.  I used Paint.net to basically remove my skin and just highlight the logo, it was a pretty awesome tattoo and for a while I thought it made a good logo until I found out how difficult it was to format to various media types and eventually promote in various services.  So this is why I am sharing with you the aspects that make a great logo.

Vector and Scalable

My recommendation is to make a vector logo because a vector can be sized and scaled without any image quality loss, it doesn’t suffer from the stretching of pixels when you try and resize say a static 200×200 jpg that you suddenly needed to be larger and fit in a 1920×1080 video frame.  Your logo needs to be scalable from being very small for profile icons, to being large enough to fit on 4k screen shares and even if you want to print it on T-Shirts, Hoodies or other media.  This means your logo shouldn’t have super fine details that would be mutilated or look mashed when shrunk too small, but also shouldn’t have anything that become absurd or exaggerated too much if the logo is expanded to a very large size.

Minimal Colors

If you ever plan to put your logo on a printed medium you will want to minimize the number of colors used in the logo, the more colors the harder it is to get a quality print on fabric, mouse mats and other components.  Colors add complexity especially when scaling as well, and often shades wind up looking too grainy when printed out on a physical medium like clothing.

Pre-Creating Banners Ad Sizes

According to Designers Toolbox and with me doing a little extra research for the others here are the most common standard ad sizes online it is recommended you create all of these versions standard with your logo or brand so you have them available.

Banner Size	Description
468 x 60	Full Banner
728 x 90	Leaderboard
336 x 280	Square
300 x 250	Square
250 x 250	Square
160 x 600	Skyscraper
120 x 600	Skyscraper
120 x 240	Small Skyscraper
240 x 400	Fat Skyscraper
234 x 60	Half Banner
180 x 150	Rectangle
125 x 125	Square Button
120 x 90	Button
120 x 60	Button
88 x 31	Button
851×315	Facebook Header
1500×500	Twitter Header Banner Size
96×96	Gravatar Logo Size

It is always good to create larger versions which are easier to shrink down to dimensions than create smaller versions which are harder to scale up unless you have your logo in vector format as mentioned previously.

Avatar, Drawings, Images or Text Logos

This is really a matter of what you really want for your brand, some people will just use artistic letters worked into the log, while others will just use a graphic or avatar representation of themselves to represent their logo.  Still others may choose any object, drawing or combination which meets the subject of their brand name.  With the name Dragon Blogger you know my logo was going to involve a dragon, but if you have something related to technology like “techno dude” you pretty much are flexible, you think maybe an avatar of a guy holding some tech junk, or a logo involving the letters T&D or something similar.  Play with a bunch of different styles and concepts when using a logo creator but remember to keep it simple.

Check Your Competition or Related Fields

Good ways to get logo idea’s is see what others are doing that are in the same field or business model, don’t copy or steal another design but find more of what resonates with you.  I consider a logo to be an artistic design choice, it has to be something you want to stick with for a while because changing logo’s can confuse people who get used to a specific brand logo and can make it harder to have consistent brand recognition.  I often don’t remember avatar logo’s of people, those generic cartoon people avatars tend to get lost on me, I remember symbols, letter patterns, and such.

In Summary

Your Logo is your own choice and do some research to find out something that broadcasts your brand image, but is very minimal on design and easy to scale, replicate, print and do the prep work and have a variety of image sizes so you are prepared to use it anywhere.