I won’t start with the classical definition of what a logo is and why is needed. We all know about logos and their use in brand awareness.

What I will talk about is mostly the specifications of a logo and what you should ask or expect from a designer when you want to create a logo.

If you are aiming at creating a business you want your logo to be as unique as representative.

So even though you might be tempted to purchase a logo that is premade and just change the text to the desired name of your brand, as you understand this won’t be unique. And I would suggest going for it if you mean to use it for simple stuff like blogging and need something quick and cheap. Apparently, you won’t make a brand with premade logos.

And another reason you won’t be making a brand is that premade logos don’t offer you flexibility as far as it concerns the font type, the colors, and the style. It is what it is. So it’s very restrictive.

So what a logo should be:

First of all, you want your logo to be made in vectors. The reason is that vectors can be scaled to any size without losing their high resolution. They are scalable graphics so they don’t get pixelated. And a vector logo can be resized even to the size of a billboard without losing quality. Vector logos can be in a form of Ai or svg.

Png and Jpg files are pixel-based and therefore are not suitable types of files for logos. They can be offered as extra by the designer for web use. So many cute and affordable logos you can find online with watercolors and flourishes and flowers are not really logos are images. And again their use is very limited.

So if you want a professional logo you will need to ask for a vector logo as the base logo and from there if you need extra images for the web the designer can build on top or offer you the logo in png and jpg format which are ideally used as avatars and inserts in e-mail templates, websites and so on.

Another important factor is the fonts. Ideally, you will want to use the fonts or the font that you are having in your logo for further printed or web media use. When you get your logo the text will be vectorized meaning it can’t be edited so you may want the designer to tell you the name of the font used. And if you purchase the font you can match it with your site or printed material so it will look great.

And last but not least are the colors. You can ask the designer to provide you with the codes of the color palette either on RGB or CMYK so you can have the similar look on your cards and business templates.

To conclude when you ask about a logo think about the overall look of your branding and choose according to what gives you more flexibility. If are only thinking of web use then you may need your logo as png and this will greatly influence what the designer can do for you because pixel-based files don’t have the limitations of vectors.