TIPS ON DETERMINING THE RIGHT LOGO DESIGNER
BUDGET
A logo is an investment in both your time and your money so when a design company offers a money back guarantee try to remember that they can not refund the time you invest which is much more valuable than your money is.
PORTFOLIO
Many designers talk a good game but in the end a design agency can only be evaluated by the quality of their portfolio, if the work in their portfolio does not contain real world samples chances are they won’t be able to deliver a premium logo design.
VISION
A logo’s goal is to be understood and remembered, and it’s purpose is to echo your unique vision for your business. If a designer is not focused on actualizing your vision, the thing they are really focused on is how quickly they will get paid.
Santa Fe Springs LOGO DESIGN
For over two decades ImageCo has been helping entrepreneurs develop memorable brand identities. We have undertaken logo design work for mechanics, universities, diamond miners, wedding singers, diners, retailers, and just about every other kind of business you can imagine. What makes us different compared to our competitors is that our background is rooted in the electrical sign industry so we undertake every design as if it will be used as an electric sign. Because of our sign first technique our logo designs can, and have been used in everything from garment labels to billboards. Our sign first approach ensures that our logos are just as successful whether they are used in TV commercials or website applications, they are consistently recognizable, understood, and remembered irrespective of size or function.
American Made ★ Design
Something which really sets ImageCo apart from many of the design companies that you probably have come across on-line, companies like Thumbtack, Design Hill, Upwork, or Crowdspring is that each and every design project we are retained to perform, we do in-house. Irrespective of the kind of project we take on, business logo, website, trade show booth, or retail sign, we do not, and never will contract out our client’s work to companies based outside the USA. Whenever you contact us at 1-855-IMAGECO the party that answers the phone is ImageCo’s owner and designer, not a middleman that marks up the cost of your project and imposes the conditions of how we do business.
CHARACTERISTICS OF A GOOD LOGO DESIGN
- Simplicity: simple logo designs do not require scrutiny, they can be understood in merely a look.
- Scalability: from business cards to store signs a scalable logo will be legible and equally emotive at virtually any dimension.
- Versatility: logos which function on any device, in print, on packaging, on a mobile phone, or on a ball cap.
- Suitability: they are appropriate, they feel right, and they are suitable for the item or business they brand.
- Relevance: a logo must be enduring and will feel equally relevant today, tomorrow, and 20 years from today.
understanding branding
Brand – It is a verb and a noun, it’s an identifying mark and also the process of denoting something to ensure that it could be distinguished, its genesis comes from the mark branded onto livestock. Nowadays a brand indicates basically anything with an objective, whether it be earnings or government agencies, a brand is an inherent aspect of defining the value of something in the public’s mind.
Branding – Is sort of like marketing and advertising’s sexy cousin, they are all from the same family, the difference being that advertising and marketing have to do with making a promise and branding’s goal is to deliver on that promise. Branding is also a calculated popularity competition directed at a target market, it’s objective is to create a mental image that the audience will connect to.
Brand Image – An image planted and cultivated through advertising and marketing as well as identity design. When a person mentions the brand names Ferrari or Corvette what we think of is their brand image, it’s a picture that exists in our minds. That image isn’t an image of a car with 4 wheels that can transport us from point A to point B, the image we have (or at least I have) is of speed, beauty, of something dangerous and exotic . That is brand image and brand image is what makes individuals buy those brands. Brand image is why individuals get most things, from Nike to Adidas Chevy or Ford, Democrats or Republicans … all driven by brand images that people can identify with.
Branding Companies – If you reflect on the history of many branding companies you’ll find that they are often rebranded advertising and marketing agencies. When a person states they are in advertising and marketing the majority of people will likely have an idea about what they do. But when someone claims “I’m in branding”… it just seems much more impressive, probably it’s since lots of people don’t recognize what it means to be in branding so it comes off as mysterious and perhaps even attractive.
Brand Identity – Is an inclusive term that explains the visual aspects of a product or agency that affect perceptions. This mostly includes the name, the logo design, the product packaging, the different colors utilized yet can likewise consist of sound, illumination, texture, signage, just about anything that can be seen, felt or heard are part of a brand identity.
Brand Identity Designers – A brand identity designer is a visual designer that concentrates on a type of visual design which helps form the public image of a firm, a product or a business. Brand identity designers produce logo designs, signage designs, packaging, and also collateral products such as cards, stationery, and also pamphlets. Some visual designers also design websites and user interfaces. The necessary role of a brand identity designer is to establish the visual cues as well as an emotional tone with the objective of influencing actions, end results and also assumptions.
select logos & signs
Ferry Street Coffee Company | Logo Design | Retail Branding
This start-up coffee roaster and bistro were actually opening up in an old part of the area and hoped to cast a nostalgic tone without coming across as uninteresting or low energy. I accomplished both jobs via creating a trademark design that contains a man on a high wheel bicycle (aka The Penny Farthing), it is old-fashioned, higher energy, and is a ageless business image.
Mid-Valley Pathology | Logo Design
Pathology is the scientific discipline that analyzes the causes and outcomes of diseases, mainly the branch of medicine which deals with the clinical evaluation of samples of body cellular material for diagnostic or forensic purposes.
The Mid-Valley Pathology brand I came up with is the only instance I recollect where I was able to integrate a bacteria-laden microscope slide within a logo design.
Normally I attempt not to be overly literal with a concept and to a point, this specific design approaches the company it represents very literally, yet it does it in a way that incorporates the slide as part of the name so it doesn’t serve so much as an illustration of what Mid-Valley Pathology does so much as acts as an enhancement to the name that makes it more intriguing, more attention grabbing and a lot more memorable.
Cool Springz | Logo Design | Retail Branding
The Cool Springz Trampoline Park was a very cool project to work on, most likely because a trampoline park is all about fun. It’s additionally a project that is way out of the norm of the sorts of projects that come my way, I’ve produced dozens of logo designs for doctors, dental experts, and legal professionals but Cool Springz is without question the one and only trampoline park which I have ever had the opportunity to work on.
Given that the name of the business has the word springz in its name the clear choice would have been to integrate a couple springs into the concept but Cool Springz is a fun place to go and spring doesn’t really reflect an environment of fun does it. My thought process on this logo project went from springs (boring) to what jumps around, kangaroos … but kangaroos are cute and this place is cool, ultimately I landed on a green tree frog and a dimensional treatment of the title itself to give the logo a much more dynamic high energy feeling.
In the end, Cool Springz ended up loving my design and named the frog Jax and incorporated him in to everything they used for advertising. I also believe this is the only time that a logo I created was made into a mascot when they had a staff member costume fabricated to look exactly like my frog design.
Travel Don’t Wander | Logo Design | Website Design
Travel Don’t Wander was a custom logo design project I took on for a travel photographer, which is a fairly specialized field of photography and I think it is a niche profession because travel photographers don’t capture places or things but instead communicate emotional experiences through the photos they capture. The idea behind this logo concept was to utilize negative space to convey more than what was visible upon first glance, which I think is quintessential of most good photographers in that they oftentimes tell whole stories using their photography.
It’s said that a picture is worth a thousand words but I think that some photographs convey much more than that because their photos frequently have an emotional fullness that can’t be revealed with mere words. I made an effort to do something similar to this logo by using the positive space in the design to suggest one thing and then at the same time using the negative space to expand upon what was communicated through the first impression. I think, in hindsight, that my objective was to both brand this photographer with a memorable Santa Fe Springs logo but also to reveal the depth of her art and in the way that she sees the world through the lens of her camera.
Coastal Wireless | Logo Design The lion’s share of business logo design jobs that I take on I seriously take pleasure in and the Coastal Wireless design was one that I certainly felt good about, but the customer didn’t quite share my excitement for it. I felt really good about the idea of using the seagull shape as a stroke in the letter A but the client, while he liked the concept, didn’t care for my choice of birds. This particular man really disliked seagulls, which he referred to as the “rats of the sky”, thankfully the rest of his family members didn’t share his scorn for this particular breed of sea bird. When I turn a design over to a customer I urge all of them to share it with friends and colleagues and family members as well as with people that they don’t actually know so as to get objective assessments on the merit of a design concept. Fortunately, he discussed it with his family members and they really loved the design and were able to persuade him and get him to sign off on it, but not before he worked me over to incorporate every other seabird he could think of … eventually I was able to talk him out of his preference of a pelican and he proceeded with the original design. Business logos are a strange animal in the design world because the people that have a tendency to hire a professional to design their logo understand how important a logo design is for their organization so they are much more vested in the result. Every logo design job has it’s share of hurdles, however the most significant challenge is finding that sweet spot in a design that works really well at the job it’s required to do in branding a business and also providing the client the identity they see for themselves.
Red Panda Publishers | Logo Design
The book spine is a narrow piece of real estate to work with, but it is the most important part of a printed book given that it is in most cases the primary thing a person views in the book store. With respect to a publishing company, it’s the absolute best opportunity they will ever have to spotlight their brand and get their logo design in front of the people that purchase actual books.
This three color design is vibrant, picturesque and eye-catching and it leaves plenty of space for the title and the author’s name.
Air LA | Logo Design
Airlines arrive and depart but it seems like that in many occurrences 1 of the things consumers often tend to remember the most are their logos. The Air LA logo design was done for a young new venture commuter/shuttle air service located in LA and although I’m not sure it really “took off” their logo design didn’t ground them. The bookend A’s in their title lent itself well to affording a good sense of airline flight and it was definitely a winner.
Vintage Case | Logo Design
Vintage case specialized in brand new cases for music instruments, that appeared to be older cases. For this custom logo design I sought to come up with a logo that possessed a fluid retro feel to it and could easily be utilized for anything from a web page to a label on brand new cases that looked like they were from a different era.
Kujak Orthodontics | Logo Design | Sign Design
Dental care business logos can easily be one of the most challenging logo jobs due to the fact that it appears that every dental professional integrates a smile, a tooth, a smiling tooth, or a toothy smile in their design. Dentistry logo designs are one of the most cliche ridden professions when it comes to company marketing, if restaurants approached their advertising in the same way dentists do every one of their company logos would be a picture trying to explain anything they served, McDonalds would probably include an image of a potato and a cow.
I recognize the thinking behind incorporating an illustration of something mouth associated to a dentist’s logo design but it has to be done subtly or it will just look like every other clipart dental professionals logo that litter the branding landscape of the dental profession.
I really enjoy doing dental business logos because it challenges me to come up with a design that implies the field of dentistry or a particular area of dental treatment like orthodontics without resorting to the clichéd course of action that so many dentists settle on.
Kujak Orthodontics offered such an opportunity and ultimately I created a concept that does not have a single smile or a tooth in it, but even though they aren’t overt, they are still implied in the design. When I turned this design over to the client the only smile that was obvious was actually the smile on Dr. Kujak’s face.
William McNally | Logo Design | Branding
The William McNally Family Foundation reached out to ImageCo to help them come up with a brand identity design that would be depictive of the devotion that William McNally had for the people in his city. The majority of logos with the name “family” in them tend to contain depictions of a happy family, a cliche heavy technique to any logo design is to be overly literal pertaining to what the name says or the industry it represents. I’ve found that the best concepts are the ones that are understated and don’t hit the viewer on the head with what the company or institution hopes to communicate.
The McNally Foundation’s name presented a unique opportunity to do a custom logo design which conveyed that they were about families without being overtly corny about it. The aim of a logo is to be remembered and recognized and if the designer tries to use the logo design to describe how people ought to think or feel they don’t understand the purpose of a logo. If viewers have to consider a logo design to understand what it means, it has been in vain, a logo needs to be instantly understood and a logo that illustrates itself will never have the chance to be understood.
Wild Orchid Studio | Logo Design Project
Wild Orchid Studios wanted a logo design which projected a spirit of serenity and class for their new hair salon. I created a design which did not go the obvious direction of making simply a stylized orchid but alternatively designed a logo which implied a flower in the pattern of a swirl incorporated into the letter O in the title and by putting emphasis on the concept along with the figure of a hummingbird hovering over the image itself. The obvious path in creating a logo design is frequently the wrong course and in this case, the design ended up not being about the orchid but alternately laid the emphasis on the perception that they wanted to forecast to their clients.
Dazzo Arabians | Logo Design
ImageCo created a one-of-a-kind company logo concept tailored to manifest the unique physical traits of the Arabian type of horses. By having a distinctive head form and very high tail posture, the Arabian is one of the very most quite easily recognizable horse breeds in the whole world.
Las Cafe | Logo Design | Restaurant Branding
Las Coffee shop logo layout a little dining establishment, design consists of a modified script font style which floats above a team of ornate lines and dots.
Smart Kernels | Logo Design
A kernel is the central part of an operating system (OS). Typically, the kernel is responsible for memory administration, process and task management, and disk managing. The kernel connects the computer hardware to the application software. In other words a kernel is {essentially|quite literally a bridge that behaves as a connection in between the software and hardware.
The logo I came up with for Smart Kernels was based on an actual bridge that is situated a couple of miles from the offices of Smart kernels. It’s a logo design that doesn’t attempt to spell out anything to anyone regarding what business they are in or how it relates to their specific location. Nevertheless it symbolized something to the business owner of the company and in quite a few cases the symbolism supporting a business logo is just as important as how it serves the enterprise it stands for.
Evolv Interior Design | Logo Design | Branding
Evolv Design is a Santa Fe Springs interior design company and this logo design is representational of the work that an interior designer does in. An interior designer is an individual who prepares, explores, coordinates, and manages such projects. Interior design is a diverse occupation that includes conceptual development, space planning, location examinations, programming, research, communicating with the stakeholders of a project, construction management, and implementation of the design.
Advanced Leadership Solutions | Logo Design | Website Design
This Santa Fe Springs logo design assignment was completed for a management expert that helps business professionals to develop into more effective at managing people, expectations, and profitability.
On The Fly | Logo Design | Retail Branding
With brands such as Cabelas and Bass Pros raking in over 7 billion a year retailing goods and equipment to outdoor sporting enthusiasts the founders of On the Fly recognized the market place was ready for an outdoor sporting store that functions as a consignment firm. Whether you are into boating, sportfishing or mountain climbing, or even hunting, On the Fly provides a destination for outdoor sports enthusiasts with all sorts of interests, a spot to market their previously owned items to other sports enthusiasts.
I created their Santa Fe Springs business logo design using an image that seizes the interest of traffic and projects an image that arouses the enthusiasm of the outdoors. With visitor traffic that averages forty five miles per hour I knew it would take more than the average logo/sign to get travelers to take notice, hence the illustration of a fly fisherman in his natural and calm habitat.
MQ Farms | Logo Design | Branding
The MQ farms brand concept wasn’t really developed for an Santa Fe Springs regional farm it was in reality developed for an investments broker, and this particular trademark was one of many that fell underneath the MQ umbrella … MQ commodities was one, MQ trading was another. The aim was really to create an identity that projected confidence, financial success, and wealth.
Turning Point Foundation | Logo Design
The Turning Point Foundation was entirely open to what kind of logo design they would like, this can be a good thing or a bad thing. Good in that it offers a designer the freedom to explore any idea that comes to mind, bad in that it’s difficult to hit a bullseye in the absence of recognizing where exactly the target is. Luckily, in this particular instance, I hit a bullseye with the 1st shot.
Brewgrrs Restaurant | Logo Design | Restaurant Branding
I’ve designed dozens of restaurant logo designs and establishment signs for restaurants, diners, sports bars, night clubs, dining establishments, and eateries all over the United States, from cupcake pastry shops to pizza parlors and oyster bars, out of all of them I believe Brewgrrs was my favorite. Brewgrrs was a neat project in which I worked closely with the business owner to produce a logo design which worked extremely well and did a fantastic job to brand them, it functioned on everything on everything from coasters, and tap handles all the way to the illuminated signage which hung over their doors, and was highly visible and very legible from over a block away.
commercial brand identity design projects
