Only Logo Design

Logo Design and Branding Visual Elements and Company Image

The Internet, in spite of its focus on information and content, is a very visual medium. Users judge business websites on more than a site's usefulness and content. A site visitor's initial, and often determining, impression, is based on the site's visual appeal. Most users make their decisions about a site within seconds of seeing the design of the home page. Opinion based on content and site features comes only after visual judgments.

Design and branding are therefore, of great importance to a business site's success. While a site may provide terrific content and helpful features, it is the site design and branding that establish a company's online image.

Company Branding
If a company brand logo is well-established offline, it makes sense to use the same logo when developing an online presence. Why start from scratch with new branding for online use if the company logo is already easily recognizable? If however, a company does not have an established logo or branding presence, hiring a professional graphic designer to create a logo and incorporate it in the website's overall design is advisable.

Don't cut corners with a company logo. Logo's that resemble (or even worse, are) ClipArt images are common online, but the message they send to site visitor's is one suggesting quick fixes and a lack of pride in the website (and therefore the business). Such logos do more harm than good.

It's also easy to overdue it. Overuse of the company logo is a common web design mistake. Tiling the logo as the website background, for instance, gives a cluttered feel to the website, and looks extremely unprofessional.

The company logo should have pride of place on your site's home page, but not to the extent of crowding out navigation tools and information. White space around the company logo attracts the eye to the design. The company logo should be visible on all pages, but never as conspicuously as on the home page. Some sites use the company logo as the home page link on their navigational features, bringing the logo to the user's attention every time they click back to the home page.

Remember that your company logo gives people a visual impression of the nature and philosophy of your business. A logo can look attractive, but still convey the wrong impression about a company. When dealing with site design and company branding, it's helpful to ask yourself, "Does our company's logo send the right message about our company? Does it get across what we are trying to convey?"

Websites and Color Palettes
The colors and style of a business website should reflect the company logo. Consistency within the website reinforces company branding and makes navigation of the site easier. Different font sizes, colors, images and the positioning of text and images should all reinforce the message sent by the company brand.

Don't forget the importance of white space to website design. White space, or negative space, is the empty area between logos, text, images, and other content. Musicians claim that music is as much about the silences between the notes as the notes themselves. The same is true of white space. White space focuses the eyes on a page's different elements.

Page Layout and Eye Tracking
Site layout is an important aspect of design, and influences how effectively a company brand works. Cram too many images, font styles, colors, and interactive buttons on a page and visitors become confused and are likely to leave the site. Use too simple a layout and visitors have difficulty seeing any structure, and once again, are likely to go elsewhere. A good layout strikes a middle ground between these two options. An effective layout creates patterns that the user can follow to navigate the site, and gives the site a solid structure.

It's important to consider eye tracking when laying out a webpage. Studies indicate that people's eyes scan WebPages, rather than reading every word of text and viewing every image. This explains why people so often make judgments of websites based on visual criteria. If the right elements are in the right places, the user notices them while his or her eye tracks across the page, and the user is then likely to look beyond page layout and start to see text and information.

Understanding eye tracking is an art in itself, and a concept that a good website designer should understand. Speaking broadly, users scanning a webpage focus on large text at the top of the page first, and then focus on the center of the page.

Navigation and Interactive Features
Company branding is influenced by how a business chooses to incorporate images, interactive features, and navigation tools into a website. Navigation tools should be easy to use. For small websites, a toolbar of navigation options that appear at the top of each page may be enough. For larger sites, a sidebar is often the better choice.

Navigational buttons should be graphic and intuitive. Users should be able to quickly grasp how to move through the site. Many online symbols have become internationally recognizable, and can be used for easy navigation.

Site navigation is a factor often overlooked by businesses, to their detriment. The business that takes the time to plan out site layout and navigation in advance is less likely to be plagued with broken links, which look unprofessional and sloppy on a business site.

While interactive features are lauded as tools for increasing site "stickiness," a business website has to balance interactivity against company branding. Interactive features that run against the core philosophy of the company detract from, rather than enhance, the purpose of the website.

Create a Style Sheet
Consistency is vital to website design and company branding. To this end, it's advisable to create a website style sheet (sometimes called "Bibles" by designers), that details such elements as color palettes, fonts, and page layout. The style sheet should also dictate when and where company branding should appear on the webpage, the system of site navigation, and how often images should be used. The combination of a well-designed company logo with a complementary color palette and website layout creates and reinforces company branding.

Source: http://www.buydomains.com