5 Things you should never do to your logo

Protecting the integrity of your logo is as important as locking the door to your business premises every night! Here’s our quick guide to the 5 things you should never do to your logo.

1.  Never remove it from your homepage!

It might be Christmas or an anniversary year, so you could well be tempted to replace your logo with a quirky, temporary one for a period of time. But don’t! It’s akin to removing the sign from your shop window and dilutes all your hard work in getting your logo recognised by your market.

Instead, create a secondary one to use across your website, social media platforms and email signatures. 

2. Never stretch it to fill a space

We’ve all at some point witnessed the inadvertent butchering of a logo by members of staff when they’ve wanted to create a PowerPoint presentation or document. Aside from it causing great distress to your marketing team, it’s like messing with the dimensions of your face, or taking a visit to a fairground House of Mirrors attraction.

So please don’t ever be tempted to alter the length and width ratios. If you want your business to look professional, this is an absolutely no-no! If in doubt, seek the help of a professional when you need to resize a logo 😉 

3. Never have just one version of it

It’s always sensible to have several design versions of your logo: black and white; one that fits on your social media accounts and another that fits with any automatically generated documents, such as through your accounts system.

Also, you need to have your logo in several different formats to ensure that there is always a suitable version available for a multitude of purposes. Here’s a definitive list of the versions that you need: editable PDF, PNG, JPEG, CMYK, RBG, Pantone and EPS.  

4. Never add a drop shadow

A perfectly acceptable logo (or text for that matter) can be ruined in one fell swoop with the addition of a drop shadow. Fortunately it was a 1990’s-thing, and the phase thankfully seems to have passed. But even now, some firms can come a cropper.

It would be much simpler if Microsoft just removed the shadow effect function from its software! 

5. Never use an old version

We accept that most people aren’t logo-pedants, but if you’re a marketing manager this pedantry is in-built. Stumbling across a barrister who insists on handing out ‘old’ business cards that display an out-of-date logo is enough to trigger marketing-rage (yes…this is a thing).

If you need any help with brand management, contact us at: office@scala.uk.com, 0114 4070159.