Are you making these 5 newbie branding mistakes?
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I guess I’m dating myself here, but I've been a professional graphic designer since 2006. 😳 This field is full of people who are both self-taught, and college-educated; some who have the natural instincts and some who only know how to use the tech.
Because of the variety of designers out there, I see a lot of mistakes being made, either from a lack of innate skill or inexperience/knowledge.
But I'm definitely not here to bash anyone; just the opposite, actually. I'm here to help!
So here are some branding no-no's that I see a lot, and why I think should be avoided.
If you suspect your current branding falls into trending traps or you get complaints about legibility on your designs and want to know how to fix it, keep reading. Or schedule a Strategy Session with me to pick my brain for up to 60 minutes!
Avoid these branding mistakes:
1 | Being trendy for trend-sake
First and foremost, there is a time & place when/where using trends helps your business become more relevant to your audience, ...and there are times/places when/where you shouldn't.
To decide when it's appropriate, you'll just have to use your best judgment! Ask yourself: does this trend have long-term staying power?
In other words, will I have to change this design in 2 years? Five? One?
Brand consistency can imply stability for your customers, so you don't want to be changing your logo or other parts of your branding too often. Among other things, people won't be able to develop brand recognition for your brand's style, right?
Here are some examples of trends that are popular right now & why I think you should avoid using them in your logo, specifically.
AVOID WATERCOLOR
While watercolor is gorgeous, and it can always be used as an accent to the overall brand vibe, I don't think it should be used in the actual logo. Why?
There are two important things you need to consider when designing a new brand:
How easily can this be reproduced in different mediums?
Process Color Printed images
web only images
Screen-print
Embroidery (for products to sell or uniforms, etc.)
small print (less detail)
large print (more detail)
How does it look in black and white, or greyscale?
Will this design always need to be in color for it to look good? (Everybody's print budget can change; you should always have a one-color version available, just in case.)
AVOID SCRIPT
If your first thought was, 'but you have script in your own brand!' Then, fist-bump 🤜🏻🤛🏻 You're super observant!! The script in my logo is there for a reason and is only used on the words that aren’t as important, giving the phrase visual hierarchy. In other words, if what you see first is “Launch” and “thing!” –I did that on purpose; it wasn’t just a pretty design choice.
What I'm actually referring to specifically, is brush script of the more illegible variety.
Many script typefaces are absolutely gorgeous, but a lot of them are also kind of illegible & therefore it's not usually good to put the name of your business in it. So if you find yourself using it, just ask: can I still read this if it's really small / from a distance?
Brush or Hand-Written script is a current, but long-standing trend that's been happening over the past 10 years and it's been evolving as the trend grows. For instance, at least in the design community, script is kinda fizzling out unless it’s hand-lettered or looks handwritten and both tend to be accents within a brand, instead of the main font choice.
Whereas before it was beautiful, perfect letters with extreme thick & thin spots as the curves wind around to shape each one; something I’d gather you probably can’t doodle on paper, at least, not without some calligraphy training. Now, there's less perfectly created brush-script-calligraphy, and more hand-written, personalized (humanized) script being used.
I need to put emphasis on humanized here because that’s where the current trend has been leading. The script text, like mine, is used more strategically as an accent to make these words on the page feel more personal and human. After all, a human did write them. 😄
If you’re not careful in your script font choice or where you use it, the trend itself will eventually fade & you'll be stuck with a logo design that's no longer relevant, meaning a re-design is definitely in your future. If you're not a designer yourself, you'll have to hire out the design again.
And if you are a designer, –shit’s still hard. The hardest things I’ve ever had to design were always related to my own brand and business; it’s just a lot easier for most of us to get into someone else’s head.
What this does not necessarily include is vintage-inspired or throwback script, with a nod to a different era. Vintage is still "in" right now and has been for 5 or 10 years. I think a vintage look can be done well, as a way to acknowledge, admire & celebrate what was done many decades before, with much different technology.
But don’t get carried away on the vintage theme either. There are definitely pathways in that design category that are hard to read or replicate in other mediums, such as a heavily distressed/aged look in a small logo or an embroidered logo on merchandise; it just doesn’t work.
2 | Unnecessary clutter
A lot of people have a list of things they want to include in their logo, assuming all of them are truly necessary in order to convey what they want, and that's just not true.
Example:
If your business is a hair salon, you don't need to have ALL the icons/graphics in your logo like: a hairbrush, scissors, a chair, a mirror, a comb, AND a lock of hair being snipped, etc. It's just too much; if your logo has the word salon in it, people already have a general idea of what you offer.
One reason clutter in a design can be bad for your business visuals is that a logo needs to be clearly viewable AND legible in a range of sizes. Extras (like adding all those icons) don't always work as well in smaller areas, like profile pictures, favicons, or business cards.
Another reason is that by showing several specific things, you can accidentally limit yourself to just the things you've shown when you might offer more than just those services shown in the logo.
Real life example:
I used to work as an in-house designer for a screenprinting & embroidery company, and one thing the art department ran across a lot with was that local farmers wanted to include an icon for every major crop they grew and every type of livestock they raised. And these “logos” were being designed for production on smaller printed or embroidered areas, making it really tough to produce a quality, uncluttered (too “busy”) design at such a small size.It'd be better to leave off the icons altogether & explain what you do with text only, or some other simplified design idea. No on gives a shit if you specifically grow peanuts, cotton, corn, and raise beef or dairy cows, etc. Just add “produce & livestock” in text underneath the farm’s title. Let’s not make things so complicated!
Also, that design idea (#alltheicons) was not original; all the farmers were doing the same thing so NONE of them stood out.
This is also just a style thing. I like clean lines and value simplicity in logo designs, so the designs I create generally tend to reflect that.
The fewer things the viewer has to look at within a design, the more he/she can focus on what you actually want them to see, and in what order.
So if you give them 1 main thing to read, plus a graphic or icon, plus a tagline or motto, then they'll tend to see those things in that order.
Example:
In my logo, the order in which I hope most people view it is like this:• Launch, Thing! (Primary text)
• the damn (Secondary text)
3 | Light or thin text
I'll be the first to tell you that I love ultra light-weight typography. I think it's simple and gorgeous, but I know when it's appropriate to use.
Extremely narrow or light type in a logo design doesn't always translate well when scaling the size down. It also doesn't embroider, print, or view well on the web (if not saved at the proper resolution).
Example:
Using Bebas Neue Thin can look great on a large building sign, where the viewer is standing in front of it, reading letters that are a foot tall. But scaling that same logo down for a business card might make that thin & narrow text harder to read.It might also be harder to read on a billboard, where the driver is going by rather quickly and viewing from further away; the lines may not be thick enough to be read easily/quickly, meaning they likely won't try reading it at all.
It can be a great tool to use to create contrast but use it wisely and in the right places, or you may have a situation spring up where no one will be able to read it!
4 | Bad use of kerning, tracking, or leading
For those of you who don't know those terms:
Kerning is the visual space between letters in a word.
Tracking is a consistent amount of added/removed space between all the letters within the text.
Leading is the space between lines in a paragraph.
This one is a pet peeve of mine actually, and it tends to separate the "Newbs" from the experienced & professional designers.
This is also one of those things that you'll have to decide on your own. In other words, it's a judgment call. But, to help with that, you can ask yourself:
Is there too much space?
(If there's so much space between letters that it's hard to tell it's still a word, then yes, there is too much. If there's so much space between lines of text that it looks like a bunch of one-lined paragraphs that don't go together, you need to reduce the amount of leading.)
Is there too little space?
(If there's so little space between letters or lines within the paragraph, that the letters are running into each other, then you should add some more space.)
5 | Using a detailed graphic in the logo
This one is kind of subjective, but from a logistical point of view: highly detailed graphics can be hard to reproduce in all sizes and mediums.
Just remember, the pieces in that design don't usually become more legible or recognizable as they get smaller; it's often the opposite.
It's not that you can't use a detailed graphic, but you won't be able to use it in all the instances where you'd put your logo, all the time. So just know that you won't be able to use it everywhere if you want it to remain recognizable.
As an example, I’ll go back to the one I used in #1 with the farmer’s icons. Don’t do it.
Last thoughts…
In the corporate environment, I ran into these things all the time. Clients would send their logo for reproduction and we'd have to tweak it because of this or that, usually related to one of the points I've just made in #5 above.
These are not part of an extensive, end-all-be-all list of suggestions though. Design rules do exist, but they can be broken. However, it's best to know what the rules are before you do so that when you break them you're doing it on purpose, strategically!
If you're a small business owner & you're on the brink of needing a brand design, then you could use my free workbook: Unearth Your Brand.
Need a little guidance?
This 8 page workbook will help you understand branding terms, nail down your brand’s vibe & purpose, work out who your ideal customer is, how to pick colors & typography, and mistakes to avoid.
A great mini-prep for the moment you’re finally ready to hire a brand designer!
If you just want a refresh or a second opinion on a design you already have in place, but might be thinking about changing a bit, then you could benefit from a Strategy Session with me.
Then you'll get about 15-30 minutes of my time, and a private link to a video where I go over what you sent to me, and discuss what I think is working in your branding & what I think may not be working as well, with some suggestions to make it better.
If you decide you'd like to re-brand within 30 days of purchasing your audit, you'll be offered a 10% discount on my Branding service as well, just because!
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