Every band these days has a logo, or wants a logo.
Previously, only corporations could have a logo, but these days even my dog has his own logo.
With so many people having graphic programs on their computers, people who can make a logo are everywhere.
The problem is they are not skilled at designing logos.
If you want to create your own logo, you have two choices.
You can buy a program like The Logo Creator which will generate pretty nice looking logos, or you can go at it yourself.
Since I am a professional graphic artist, I thought I might give a little insight into logo design.
The first part to logo creation is picking the right font.
Choose a font that has a look and feel that represents your band.
Most free fonts have been over used. If you are serious about your band you should pay a couple bucks to have your own font.
Great places to get fonts are Fonts.com and ITCFonts.com.
Once you decide on a couple of fonts that have the look you want, you need to check them out.
- Make sure that the font you select prints well.
Print it out on your printer to check for jagged curves.
If it doesn't print well, you don't want it.
- Make sure that it looks good on the web.
Make a gif and see if it is hard to read. If it is you don't want to use it.
- Make sure that the font has all the characters you might want to use in the future.
Don't use a band font that doesn't have numbers or some letters.
Later on, you might be out of luck for flyers and other materials.
You would be surprised how much people associate products with the font type.
Look around at the free font sites and you will be able to name the products these fonts are based on.
Try and find a font that is not based on another product that your viewer will recognize.
People are used to seeing clean text on tv, in print ads, and in movies.
They know what looks professional, and what is not.
The last thing you want is for potential fans to think you're cheap.
Even if you are cheap, you don't want to appear that way to labels and clubs.
Once you find a font you like, the logo will almost create itself.
Spend some time choosing a font; it will pay off in the long run.
If you get picked up by a major record label, you can avoid a complete change to your look.
Now that I have found my font, what do I do next?
Next we look at colors. Colors are just as important as the font.
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