Over the years, LogoBee has been designing logos and accumulating articles and resources for its clients. Finally, they've released a concise set of logo design tips to help you along with your project, and ensure that you end up with a logo that will perfectly suit your needs. So without further ado, here are LogoBee's top ten tips!

Keep it Simple!

These are probably the best words of advice, and it ties into almost all of our upcoming tips. A complicated logo will not only make your logo difficult to reproduce and maintain, but you will also fail to engage your audience. The logo is the ultimate 'elevator' pitch to your potential clients and business partners. You don't have time to recite your entire business plan in an elevator pitch, and the same concept applies to corporate logo design.

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You have developed your business idea, finished your market research, and now you need to decide on a name. The name must earn your potential customer's attention and trust. Start considering names in the beginning stages once you have determined your field of business. Use a serious name for a serious company. Use a fun name for creative company or a company that markets children.

Before you finalize your company's name, consider logo design concepts. They are difficult to capture on the first try. This is why a company should provide a designer with more information than just the company name. Consider the type of qualities you would like your company to portray. There are various logo design styles that portray different qualities. If you want to represent a very aggressive, high tech, corporate, and cutting-edge company, you should not come up with the name like 'Sloopy' or 'Scroochy'. Belive it or not, some of the names for clients in the past have been so inappropriate that it is not worth mentioning. The logo would look like Tinker Bell in a hockey Helmet!

Here are a few of the most important rules to consider when coming up with the best possible name:

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Disruptive Business Models and Negative Incentives

Outsourcing has become a growing trend in a variety of industries. As firms become more specialized in the products and services they offer, the need to outsource certain tasks has become apparent. A small business will probably find it more cost effective to hire a tax accountant than do it themselves. They also will probably want to hire an artist to create their logo design and brand identity. This has all become intuitive to companies that need to focus more and more on their core business. But what happens when the service company out-sources its own contracts?

This model of 'double outsourcing' is relatively new in the business world. It leaves the service company with virtually no overhead, only control over marketing, advertising and administration. In the logo design realm, this means that designers from all over the world will be contracted to work on any given project at any given time, working through a centralized network to submit their work. This free-market mechanism allows designers to bid freely on jobs, set their own hours and work as they please.

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You've been in business for more than a couple of years. You've enjoyed moderate success through positive word of mouth and by delivering top-level quality of service, but your industry is becoming more and more competitive and the need for a more professional look is becoming imperative. Sound familiar? The truth is that in today's market even the best companies need to sell its image and brand in order to succeed. This is achieved primarily via the company logo as it is associated with all of the company media: letterhead, envelopes, websites, business cards, brochures and advertising campaigns.

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On the left, the current Spartans' logo. On the right, the proposed new one.
 

Changing a logo is not a simple task, and it’s rarely even useful.

There are monetary concerns, for one thing. Changing a logo means that you have to replace the old logo by the new one on all products related to your company. This is a small concern for internet firms whose logo only appears online, but for a team like the Michigan State University’s Spartans, it means replacing all the uniforms, souvenirs etc.

However, even more importantly, when you alter your logo, it’s the whole image of your company that you change.

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The LogoBee design team knows that free stuff is hard to find and quality free stuff even harder! After 10 years in the business, we wish to fix that problem by sharing our logo design savvy by offering these high-quality free logos for you to download.

Each logo design was created by our talented designers using Adobe Illustrator. They are provided free of charge for you to download in scalable vector format (Adobe Illustrator CS3). Click the picture of a logo to download it. Each logo includes a brief description of what we think it would be better used for, but the possibilities are endless!

You are welcome to use these logos for your business or for personal use, but we have to ask you not to distribute them without permission.

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 Many important factors go into the creation of corporate identity. What colors are right for us, Fonts? There are many other questions that arise when one is working with logo designs. One question that tends to be overlooked is whether or not your design will be relevant in 5 or even 10 years. More importantly, once a company has established itself with a specific look, feel and brand, it becomes more and more difficult as time goes by to change it. Some companies have enjoyed success without ever having to change their brand image. Kentucky Fried Chicken has used Colonel Sanders in their logo ever since the company was founded. Aside from some updates on their marketing front; Nike would be another good example of a timeless brand-image. Pepsi took a risk in the mid 90s by completely changing their image and logo but did so with alarming success. However, it could have resulted in commercial suicide. If you'll remember, in the 1980's Coca-Cola changed their brand image to Coke. Pepsi then took over top seat in the market shortly thereafter. Some questions to ask yourself if you are thinking about redesigning your logo:

Starting An E-Commerce Business: Baby Steps Starting your own e-commerce business can be quite the adventure. There is nothing wrong with falling head over heels in love with your ideas and plans and becoming overly excited. But always remember, feet first. Creating a business from scratch is like a child learning to walk. You need to grab on to something solid, feel around, get a sense of balance, and take baby steps. Risky Business Before running full speed ahead with your brilliant business brainchild, proper planning is required. Being an entrepreneur is risky business, however you can improve your chances of success with preparation and development.
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Internet search engines exist to organize the seemingly immeasurable amount of information available on the web. They direct people to pages that are relevant to their searches, pages that discuss the exact keywords they are looking for. For businesses that receive the majority of their clientele from search engines, search engine rankings can make or break their business. Search Engines Search engine optimization (SEO) is a marketing technique that enhances a website and its content in order to increase the chances of achieving a high rank the search engine result pages (SERPs). Search engines are very secretive about their criteria and ranking systems as they continuously update and revise their algorithms (mathematical formulas used to determine which web pages are displayed in search results), and therefore there is less likelihood of webmasters and search engine optimizers being able to achieve higher rankings by manipulation and spamming. Every search engine has its own formula and criteria for indexing and ranking pages. One can analyze SERPs and backward links (all the links pointing at a particular web page) and attempt to determine a search engine's indexing criteria, however there's a lot of risk involved in relying on a limited number of optimization techniques. Because of the unpredictable nature of search engines, websites can easily move from a top ranking position on a SERP down to the third or fourth SERP or even be banned from the search engine altogether.

Marketing has always been important to businesses and in the information society of today the internet is a necessity for all companies.  One of LogoBee’s recent clients realized this and has taken advantage of their various services.  LogoBee offers customers more than just custom logo design services; they also offer graphic design services for business stationery, brochures, flyers and web design.  This lets customers get professional design work done to satisfy all of their marketing needs.
Wesley Geys the VP of the L G Art Gallery contracted LogoBee to design a logo.  A contemporary and modern art gallery that sells paintings and sculptures located in Florida.  Beautiful art sells but a proper brand can help a company get recognized.  The abundance of graphic design information available on the LogoBee website; and straight forward explanation for getting started was very helpful in the beginning.  The constant customer support ensured that the proper design was created within a minimum amount of time.
Therefore, when Mr. Geys required the creation of a website for the L G Art Gallery he consulted the LogoBee website.  The available samples of past websites which were designed by the web team at LogoBee impressed Mr. Geys and he contacted them for an estimate on the website that he had in mind.  According to Mr. Geys, “The design process was fantastic.  It went really smooth and all the main items were discussed and understood before they went to design.” This led to a sleek website design and CMS which is easy to upload art that is currently for sale.  The logo design can be seen on the website and compliments the rest of the site beautifully.  Since the same company was used for both designs this was a natural occurrence.
Satisfying your clients should be the goal of any graphic design company and LogoBee strives to accomplish this with every project.  Mr. Geys was certainly satisfied and “would absolutely recommend LogoBee to anyone needing a logo design or website.”  If you are in need in both services, LogoBee would be happy to help.

Almost all server providers have counters and tools to monitor your website traffic. You can find out where the traffic is coming from and the regions from which the visitors are originating. You can also find out daily visitor statistics, and other useful things such as how they entered and how long they stayed to browse. You can learn about the demographics of your website visitors and track trends and patterns. By gaining a better understanding of the popular pages on your site and your site's overall performance, you can plan your sites future development, and even focus on specific aspects of your site. Depending on how precisely you wish to track your site's success, you can also purchase software programs to assist you as well.

The first few years of an e-commerce company is usually the make or break period of the business. Revenues may be stagnant and expenses may seem overwhelming. It takes time, patience and determination. Sometimes you just need to take baby steps, then be patient and pray.

f you are quite knowledgeable on your business's industry, then publishing articles online is a good start to building a reputation for your site. You can submit articles to free submit directories (where others can download your article as content for their own sites, giving you full credit), online magazines, ezines, and websites relevant to your business.

Paid Advertising

Pay-Per-Advertising:

• Pay-Per-Click: Pay-per-click advertising consists of a search engine or directory that places your website in their database, and charges you a specified amount every time your website comes up in a search and is clicked on, thereby, generating traffic to your site. The amount of the fee is usually determined by bidding on keywords and ranking.

Search Engines: As a business owner, your first priority should be to get your website listed in the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN and Alta Vista. This can be done simply by submitting your website to the various search engines.

Directories: You can also submit your site to web directories, which are databases of categorized listings of websites. Focus on directories that are popular and that specialize on your industry.

Directories: You can also submit your site to web directories, which are databases of categorized listings of websites. Focus on directories that are popular and that specialize on your industry.

Advertisement should start immediately after the company is created and you have decided on a unique name. The more people see your company's advertising, the more they will recognize its name. You want people to remember your company in a positive way. It is similar to making a first impression when meeting a person. So the first thing you have to work on is your name and your face. In the business world your company's logo is the name and face of the company. Its effectiveness is based primarily on your logo design.

The first and the most inexpensive way of advertisement, is face to face advertising. You say your company name to people who you meet so they remember you. Now if you want them to remember you for a longer time, an effective way could be to hand them your business card with your name phone number and address. This is the most common way of advertisement.

You can customize anything; letterhead, envelopes, even on a pens and mouse pads with your logo design on it! Promotional materials are endless, from a t-shirt to custom pins. All this is done for only one purpose, so that as many people as possible can see your logo and remember your company. There are many different ways to advertise your business. The most important thing is to be consistent. When people start recognizing your logo and associating this image to what your company is all about, this is called brand recognition.

Why is it important?

The idea is to create strong brand recognition. You want people to think of your service or product before they start opening the yellow pages and looking for someone else. If you walk by McDonalds you don't expect to find a hammer and nails. Even if your logo does not say "hamburger", people still know what the company sells. Advertising is meant to attract more customers, to win their trust and build stronger brand recognition.

You don't have to be a computer genius to achieve higher search engine rankings for your website. Effective search engine optimization can be done by anyone who has the time and determination. There exists a horde of information, suggestions, ideas, methods and techniques about successfully optimizing your website for search engines. SEO companies do not use any 'special' tactics that we don't already know or that we can't easily research on the internet.

Safe SEO techniques:

• Content: Add valuable and relevant content to your site. The more content the better. Keep your paragraphs brief and to the point.

• Continuously update your website: Add new information and new pages to your site. Create a section on your home page containing up-to-date news items relevant to your business (ex.: "logo design" at www.logobee.com).