Designing a logo for an educational or academic institution can be a subtle task. This is because mostly educational or academic institutes are non profit organizations, yet the objective of the logo that is to be designed for them has the same motto as any other organization whether profit oriented or not. The primary objective of a successful logo is to promote a brand and establish its authority amongst its competitors. Hence the task is subtle. Let us take a look at what we need to keep in mind while developing or designing a logo for an academic institute.
A good logo design or a good corporate brand identity is instrumental in selling a product or to ascertain its legitimacy in the eyes of the prospective customer. In the graphic design world flexibility and scalability are the key factors which determine the success of a particular logo design. A logo should be beyond the barriers of cultural diversity, language, its mode of transmission media and colours. Let me elaborate on this. You might need to transmit a logo via fax or email. It might be printed in a newspaper, published in a website in black and white. So a logo has to be a timeless, durable and universal face of your brand which is scalable.
We find so many companies re-designing their logos and brand identities. It’s not for nothing. They have felt that their logo does not comply to the above guidelines and they took decisions to redesign their logos. A change in brand identity is not an easy thing to carry out. It costs the company a lot. Apart from the direct cost of designing a logo or brand identity, they have to change their letterheads, visiting cards, envelope, and any pre-printed stationery that they might have with the new logo. They also have to spend a lot in advertising by which they can let people know about the change of their brand identity. Still companies change their logos and brand identities when they find that the current logo is not good enough.
We at shopfordesigns.com have been telling our buyers that when they post a logo or graphic design contest they should regularly visit their contest page, post ratings, put comments and give directions to designers regarding what they are looking for. Every designer comes up with a concept based on what he or she thinks is right. But as a buyer, the contest holder is the best judge about the vision and mission statements of his business and the kind of artwork he or she needs.
After a design contest is live at shopfordesigns, designers start posting their concepts. Now it is on the buyer to guide the designers with the colour scheme, catchline, concept and other aspects of design.
To help our contest holders or buyers with these ratings and comment posting, one of our users have come up with an informative and exciting video. He has requested us to post the video at our blog and here it is :
Some weeks back our client David Kavanagh sent us an email and asked if it is possible to post a logo design contest and not let one designer see others’ submissions. Well it is when the idea of “secret ballot” came to our mind. We thought that the idea was pretty good as secret ballot will make every designer think creatively and not get influenced or inspired by other designer’s designs.
We went back to our drawing board and started designing what we call secret ballot for contest holders or buyers. They can now post a logo design contest or a webpage design contest and not let one designer see the submissions of other designers.
I am generally on the internet for about 14 to 16 hours a day. Various logos have been my area of interest since the last 10 years or so. I do not know if I can call myself a logo expert but people won’t object if I say that I have fair exposure in logo design.
During my quest for best logo designs, I have come across some great logos and some awefully ill designed logos that break all barriers and norms of logo design dont’s.
So in a nutshell I would like to advice you to steer clear from naive designers who claim to make great logos for peanuts for your brand. Remember my friend there is nothing called a “Free Lunch” in this world. Good things always come for a price.
Say you are competing for a logo design contest at ShopForDesigns. You could use the message board in our site to your advantage and ask questions to the buyer in order to get an edge over others. If you understand pretty well what the client needs then you will not have to look around in the dark. We have seen from our experience that communicating with the buyer well is a contest half won.
By way of conversation try to find out what the buyer has in mind and what is he or she looking for. Remember that every buyer has a picture in mind when he is asking for a logo or some other graphic work. So if you can find out what the buyer has pictured in his or her mind then your work boils down to just putting that imagination into a design.
So now that you have won your logo design contest what comes next is preparing the deliverables for the contest holder which you will need to upload to the website. Here a very helpful tip that we can give you is that if you want the contest holder to give you future work, and most cases we see it happen, then you need to please him with your professionalism. Sending him great deliverables could really be your first step in winning your next graphic design project.
All said and done let us get into the details of planning your deliverables folder. Well now that the battle is won and you emerge victorious still its only a journey half done until you get the client to say the real “wow” in your favour.
Here we outline the tricks and techniques that will help you do it. We would say that as a logo designer or a graphic designer it is your responsibility to get across the proper files to your contest holder even if he has not asked for it.
There are many non-profit organizations which are working for greater causes with an aim to heal the world and make it a better place. The first things that startup non-profits need is a logo and a brand identity. This is because they have to raise funds to further their cause and in order to raise funds they need a very professional logo and a decent brand identity so that people aka donors take them seriously and donate generously.
Well budget in most cases for a logo or a brand identity for a non-profit organization is generally very minimal. They run by donations of their patrons and hence have little resource at their disposal when they are just startups. But they still need a logo and a brand identity to be designed in order to move on.
Hello and welcome again. We have been receiving queries regarding how to post projects at shopfordesigns. To help our buyers to post their graphic design job on the site we have decided to come up with a video to help you do it. Please watch the video closely and you shall not have any problem posting your next logo design or website design project at SFD.