Additionally, branding becomes imperative to gain the support of the public also in standing together with the nonprofit in its endeavors. But since most of the nonprofit founders are not well versed with the intrigues that rule the marketing and branding spheres, they end up creating a logo and think that would be sufficient to meet their branding needs.

In as much as logo is a good starting point for branding a nonprofit, more is required and below are top tips for successfully branding a nonprofit organization.

Differentiate yourself

By differentiating yourself or the nonprofit, you are showing the world how you are different from the other nonprofit organization in your industry. You need to demonstrate what the nonprofit will be offering differently and how you will be doing it so that you convince potential donors that they, indeed, deserve to support your cause and not your competitors. Differentiate yourself by having a clear mission, vision and goals that no other nonprofit is currently focusing on.

Personalize the organization

Personification is something which can no longer be ignored when it comes to branding nonprofit organizations. Personification makes supporters feel part and parcel of the organization, for instance, by allowing supporters to create their pages on the organization websites to post their photos and stories, they will feel more welcome and it will be easy for them to help drive the agenda of the organization forward.

Still on personification, the nonprofit can give donor various options of the projects they would like to invest in. Essentially, this is simply feeding the donors ego by letting them think that they have control and they can choose where to channel their donations, based purely on their personal preferences.

Engage the stakeholders

For you to brand your nonprofit successfully, you must engage those who are truly passionate about your activities or mission. You should learn how to identify the stakeholders in the industry and also other individuals who would be interested in supporting the activities you are undertaking. But this does not meant that you should close the door to any other person who would be willing to talk to you but is not in your industry. Keep your doors open and engage as many people as possible.

Refine your message thoroughly

Just like branding in any other business, you must have a compelling user selling point to attract the attention of the target audience. In charity branding, your user selling point should be your organization’s main message. While branding the nonprofit, the message should not just be a tagline to accompany the organization’s logo. It should be clearly crafted, simple, meaningful, and powerful and compelling enough to tell the potential donors what the organization is all about while at the same time giving them a reason to channel their resources towards the missions of the nonprofit.

Use the power of story telling

Story telling has a way of creating strong connection between people in different places and under different situations. Nonprofit organizations usually deal with global issues, but sometimes they concentrate in certain specific areas or regions. By using story telling effectively, the nonprofits develop the ability to highlight their concerns in a more subtle way and attract the right donors, who are able to connect with the situations or problems depicted in the stories.

Unleash the power of volunteers and the social media

At this current age of advanced digital technology, it goes without saying that every serious nonprofit organization should be participating actively in the social media platforms. Nonprofits can harness the power of social media to build a decent amount of followers, whom they can then ask for volunteers who would be interested in furthering the course of the organization. Definitely, there will be individuals passionate about the organization and who would love to share more about the organization in the social media. If you can get a good number of such volunteers, you can have a social media marketing team that can increase the popularity of the organization in the internet leading to the discovery and acquisition of more donors.

Consistency

Finally, with all the branding strategies you will have in place for the nonprofit organization, implementation must be on a consistent basis. Disjointed branding efforts will just work for the short time, but for longevity and good results in the long run, branding the nonprofit must never stop.

Learn about these top trends in business card designs!

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But I know that you don’t subscribe to the mediocre crop of designers and you are keen on designing logos that will stand out from the crowd and brand the business effectively. To help in your quest for becoming an epic logo designer, here are certain tips and ideas you can use to ensure that you don’t create logos that suck.

Create readable logos

The first annoying thing you will see with most logos today is that they are never readable or at least you have to strain in order to mark out what is written or drawn in them. The primary reason for this is poor choice of fonts. Most of the current designers are eager to try out the latest fonts, some of which have never been tested in various mediums. In as much as you are allowed to take advantage of your creative freedom to try different components in design, your choice of font should be spot on so that your designs are readable. Remember, an effective logo should grab attention and the moment it can’t be read, it losses this important aspect.

The logo must be scalable

Many are the times when you see a beautiful logo on the company website, but when they send to you a printed mail, the logo looks so boring and different because it has been printed in a small size. The problem here is that the logo was not designed to be scalable. An effective logo must be scalable enough so that it doesn’t lose its properties irrespective of the display size. Ideally, the logo should retain all its design components when printed in small marketing materials such as pens or business cards or when displayed on large prints such as posters or billboards.

Get the colors right

Color choice is another area where most logo designers get it all wrong. Apart from making the logo visually appealing, the choice of color should also be aimed at evoking the right emotional responses from the target audience. Colors should thus be used effectively to communicate ideas as well as convey trust to the target audience. This calls for having a good understanding of the color psychology in design so that you know when to use which colors during the logo design process. Additionally, a beautiful logo is not the one with all the colors of the rainbow. Remember, the world is edging towards minimalism in design and it is not the number of colors used, but rather the effectiveness of the colors in the design.

Be careful about adopting trends

It may be tempting to base your design ideas on a certain fad in the industry that almost everyone has adapted to. But this is very dangerous since trends come and go. If you design the logo to adapt to a certain trend, the logo will cease to have its appeal once the trend is over. A great logo is one with the ability to withstand the test of time and remain effective for many more years to come. You should therefore aim at coming up with timeless designs that don’t follow fads or trends. This is why corporate giants like coca cola, Apple, Google, Nike, McDonalds and many have managed to create strong brands because their logos are timeless and not based on any given trend.

Use Negative Space

The use of negative space in design is a nice trick for creating beautiful and timeless logos laden with hidden meaning or symbols. The industry standard for logos with negative space is the FedEx logo. It conveys a powerful hidden message about the company’s desire to move forward and also make fast and quick deliveries.

Be yourself

Another despicable thing being witnessed in the logo design industry is plagiarism of logo ideas. Designers are in a hurry to make a quick buck and so the best they can do is to browse logos and copy the designs at the expense of utilizing their skills to come up with original designs. The only way to become a proficient logo designer is to always strive to create original designs. There are so many places and so many things which can be used for inspirations and it is just sad that designers refuse to think and resort to copying.

Check out these logos in just one color!

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Unknown to many, you don’t have to be a design geek to create a stunning logo which will drive your YouTube channel to success. All you have to do is follow certain conventions and also use trips and tricks which have been proven time and again to deliver quality logos. Presented below are a few factors worth taking into account if you want to create a magnificent YouTube logo for your channel-:

Begin by knowing what your message is

Your YouTube logo will be the brand identity for your channel for people who will be browsing YT videos. It should be designed in such a manner that people will be able to tell easily what your channel is all about. This makes it important to determine exactly the type of message you would like to share with your followers and viewers in the channel. Out of the message, it will be easy for you to decide on the other aspects of the logo such as the symbols, fonts, and colors amongst other design features.

Browse other YouTube channels

Once you have known what your congruent marketing message is, the next step is to browse other YouTube channels for more inspirations. By browsing the channels, it doesn’t imply that you lack in originality or you want to copy other people’s logo, but it is designed to give you an idea of what the top guys are doing right as far as YouTube logo design is concerned. Of great concern to you should be the leading channels in your niche, which also happens to be your greatest competitors. Have a look at their logos and pick a few cues you could use to make your logo even better than theirs.

Make a clean and functional logo

At this point, you already have an idea of the kind of message you would like to pass across to your channel visitors and you have also browsed the top channels in your niche and you now know what kind of logos are pulling the crowds in your niche. The next step is now the actual design of the logo. You have the option of doing the design on your own, which will give you lots of flexibility to translate your idea into the design.

But if you don’t have the design skills, you can outsource the creation to graphics designer, whom you will share with your inspiration so that they can transfer it to the design. Whichever option chosen, the logo must remain clean and functional since this is one of the characteristics of top performing logos in the world.

Depending on your research and the suitability of your channel, you can create the following logo types for your YouTube channel-:

Symbol or Icon logos – with this kind of a logo, a symbol or an icon is used in the design of the logo. It doesn’t include any letter like the channel name. The beauty of such logos is that they are very simple, yet powerful and remains memorable in the minds of potential clients for a very long time. Think about Apple logo for instance.

Word or Letter Mark Logos – with these logo types, letters or words are used as the primary essence of the logo. Google logo is an example of a word or letter mark logo.

Combination mark logos – with these, you use a combination of words, letters and symbols in creating your YouTube logo.

Get the colors right

The colors used in your YT channel logo are very important since colors have a way of passing different message or emotions to those who view the logo. Choose colors appropriately depending on the feelings or the emotional responses you intend to invoke from your channel visitors.

Choose the right logo sizes

YouTube recommends that your channel logo should render at 98 x 98px and you are recommended to upload sizes of about 800px x 800px. On the size still, remember that you are likely to use the logo in other social sharing sites, hence it should be versatile size that will cut across all your potential marketing platforms.

Make the logo memorable

Finally, a successful logo is one which is easily memorable. Your views should be in a position to recognize the logo easily even if they see it somewhere out of YouTube. In this manner, it becomes easier for them to remember your channel and this is very powerful for branding and marketing the channel.

Learn how to build a successful social media strategy here!

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Consider the use of an online logo generator tool: free logo generators can be an excellent way that you can see how the text of your name fits in with a number of different images. Using an online free logo generator can be a great way that you can also find inspiration for symbols that may work for your professional logo design. Trying out a few different results could actually present you with a logo that’s pretty close to the finished product that you’ll end up using for your contractor company.

Remember where the logo has to go: as a contractor there is a very good chance that you will have to use your logo for branding on your website, branding on all of the paperwork that you produce as well as branding for labelling all of your equipment. By picking out a logo that much too complicated or logo that simply won’t look great on a small scale, you could be making a very difficult decision as a construction professional. Logos for contractors need to have simplicity as well as scalability. Use a logo generator to get an idea of a logo that might look great anywhere

Related to your trade: a logo definitely has to have some type of relation directly to your trade this means that if you are a contract professional that provides plumbing and electrical or contract professional that provides just construction and masonry projects, you should use this as inspiration for the symbols.

Consider using a professional: as a contractor it’s fairly tempting to do it yourself with almost everything. A logo is certainly not something that you should consider doing yourself if you don’t have much experience with graphic design. With the assistance of a graphic designer or an online logo generator you can work at designing a logo that’s fit for your construction company that you can have confidence in. Remember that most logos are designed to last at least a decade so if you don’t feel confident in the type of product that you might be look to create, use a professional. Professional services will also ensure that you can better interact with the public through your brand and that your logo will instil confidence in your customers.

Setting yourself apart from the competition: the competition in the contracting business is very competitive and if you want to win out on bids as compared to some of your competition businesses, you really have to set yourself apart. To begin this means setting yourself apart with your logo. A contractor logo needs to be something completely different from the competition and this means showcasing your own personal style. While your name might be something that’s very unique in the industry, if you use the same image for the same type of image as your direct competition it’s going to make for confusion in the market.

Keep some of these top considerations in mind if you are interested in building a logo for contractors or construction professionals!

Learn how an entrepreneur can succeed with personal branding here

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It is possible that an organization or a business entity has nothing to do with the animals. But, there are certain specific characters or features of the animal which they admire.  they would like to associate with their products and services.

For instance, when a lion is used in a logo, it could signify courage or dominance of the business in the given field. An eagle, on the other hand, might signify sharpness and accuracy while a dove might be used to show purity, sincerity and meekness of the organization. Animals can also be used in a logo as a base of identity for a given region or location of the business.

For example, using a bear in a logo might suggest that the business is located in the cold region or in the cold mountains. A kangaroo on the logo, on the other hand, will signify that the business must be operating from Australia or is dealing with Australian products and services.

Presented here are ten animal logos showing how animals can be used intelligently in a logo.

The World Wildlife Fund

The first awesome logo we look at featuring an animal is the World Wildlife Fund Logo. This is a simple black and white logo with a giant panda on it. The use of panda in the logo is not only appropriate because the organization mainly deals with wildlife protection. But, by choosing panda particularly, they are trying to raise awareness about the endangered species of animals. One of them is a Panda. From a designer’s point of view, the logo is an outright winner given that it is simple, minimalist and easily recognizable.

NBC Logo

NBC is a popular television channel in the United States. To help in its marketing and branding, they have a nicely designed logo in full bright colors. A closer look at the logo will reveal to you a peacock with the feathers spread out. It indicates the quality and richness in variety of the programs availed by the broadcaster.

Toblerone Logo

Toblerone is a brand chocolate which originated in Bern, Switzerland. The logo features the Matterhorn Mountain and a white bear climbing it. The bear has been used as a hidden symbol in the logo. It is a heraldic animal in Bern city hence its use in the company’s logo is very appropriate.

The Firefox Logo

Firefox is a renowned tech giant offering one of the best search engines on the internet. Its logo is one of the best animal logos you will ever come across. It features a fox blazing in fires and going around a globe. The fox is naturally an intelligent animal. Its use in this logo can be an indication of the efficiency and speed that users experience when they use the Firefox engine for searching on the internet.

Pittsburgh Zoo and Aquarium Logo

The Pittsburgh Zoo and Aquarium logo is another perfect demonstration of animal logos. Its design is plain and simple, and it uses negative space to illustrate lion and a chimp facing each other with a tree in between. Present at the roots of the tree is two fish swimming away. Also, two birds can be seen flying from the tree. This animal logo is appropriate as it signifies what people can expect to see at the zoo and aquarium.

Atlanta Falcons

The Atlanta Falcons logo is another beautiful animal logo you will enjoy looking at. The design depicts a falcon up in the air with the eyes focused and claws open. It is almost as if it is just about to make a swoop on prey. It signifies the aggression and the accuracy of the team.

Puma Logo

The Puma logo is another awesome animal logo you will lay your eyes on. The logo shows a puma taking a typical long jump over the letters. It shows power, speed, and aggression. These have been used by the sportswear.It is used to indicate some of the attributes desired by every athlete who uses their products.

The Ferrari Logo

The Ferrari logo is another animal logo that has been associated with the overall success of the Italian sports car manufacturer. The logo features a prancing horse as a sign of power and exceptional performance that customers can expect from the Italian brand car.

The Jaguar Logo

Jaguar is another car manufacturer with a beautiful animal logo. Just like the Ferrari, the Jaguar logo features a prancing animal. The Jaguar is ready with all of its teeth out and prepared to attack. It signifies aggression, power and exceptional performance offered by the car.

Check out what is wrong with The Met Museum Logo!

All trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. AppMaven LLC or LogoMaven is not affiliated with any of the companies mentioned on this post. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

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The Elements of Graphics Design

The Elements of Graphics design is one of those books you will be recommended to as the best to start with in this industry. It is an introductory book on graphics design and it presents you with all the basics you need to have your foot on the right path in the industry. Though graphics design can at times be a technical subject, the book makes it simple in a clear language along with appropriate illustrations to make you understand the contents better.

Making and Breaking Grid

Having proper layout is something very crucial when starting any project in graphics design and most people new to the industry usually have a rough time in getting it right. To take away all the doubts and the confusions, all you have to do is to go through the book – Making and Breaking the Grid. This is one of the top graphic design books that will teach you all you need to know about layouts and grids so that you will have the confidences to do it right the first time and at all times.

The Elements of Typographic Styles

Without the right choice of typography, your design projects will never amount to anything. They will lack meaning and style thus effectively renders your design useless. The topic is such an important one in the field of graphic, and you deserve to give it all the attention it deserves. The Elements of Typographic Styles is one of the best graphic design books that will give you all the basics you need to know about typography. In this book, you will not only learn about the various typographies but also you will understand the various and proper contexts of their application.

Los Logos Series

Logo design is one of the leading branches of graphics design and as such, it is a preference to many budding designers. With the Los Logos Series, you get your ultimate guide to everything you need to know about the developments in logo design. The book showcases logos as comprehensives visual languages as well as the most recent cutting edge logo designs and logo designers in the globe.

With the illustrations in the book, you will understand what goes into designing an effective logo as well as how to get inspiration to design logos that will stand out from the crowd. Even after you become a proficient designer, this is one of the graphics design books you will not want to get separated from.

Designing Brand Identity

This is not just a top graphics design book for those interested in building brands and brand identity, but also those interested in other branches of graphics design as well. We all know that logos play a major role in branding and this book tells all you need to know right from the concept stage of logo design to the application of the logo in creating the brand for the organization. You also get to learn about the inner details of branding and what it takes to create a powerful and a formidable brand through the use of logos.

How to be a Graphic Designer without Losing your Soul

How to be a Graphic Designer without Losing your Soul is like a career manual to guide you in the graphics design profession. It is especially recommended for the young designers who are interested in establishing their graphics design business so that they are not employed by agencies where they will lose their soles in the name of churning out designs.

It offers quality and actionable advice on how you can run a successful and fulfilling business on your own. If you are a designer with an entrepreneurial spirit, then this is a graphics design book which you have to read before getting your feet wet in the profession. This has become added to the required reading on graphic design books for many programs.

Package Design Workbook: The Art & Science of Successful Packaging

A lot goes on behind the scenes in package design. Branding and packaging goes hand in hand and this is rated among the top graphics design books for designers who want to specialize in product packaging. The Package Design Workbook gives detailed explanation on the ins and outs of great product packaging. The books are presented in appropriate and easy to read manner and it also comes with detailed illustrations to make you understand each point clearly.

There are other top graphic designs books you could start with, but these are the best ones as they cut across the entire field thus give you a strong and comprehensive rooting in the profession.

Learn how to stay productive as a designer here!

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There are five basic logo design styles, each with its set of different strengths and weaknesses, and it is necessary for the designer and the client to be aware of these styles so that they can make the right choices when designing logos for their businesses. Below is a brief definition of each of the types as well as a few tips on how to make the right choice depending on the nature of your business-:

Woodmark logo design style

Woodmark logo style is also known as text logos. On a study organized on the top 100 brands in the world, it was discovered that 35% of them consisted purely of text, with most of them styled uniquely using different fonts. These logos are known as woodmark logos and can also be referred to as logotypes.

Woodwork logo design style works wonders when the name of the company is quite distinctive. For instance, the Google logo is an example of a woodmark logo design style featuring a simple, minimalist design. But it has worked well for the branding of the tech giant because the name also is simple, short and memorable. Other examples of big brands which have used this logo design style effectively include Yahoo and Pinterest amongst other brands that use relatively simple texts as the name and the logo.

This kind of logo style design is accordingly recommended for small companies or small businesses that are just starting to get their feet off the ground. This is because at this stage, getting the word out about your business is very important and you need to have a logo that will clearly communicate the name of the company.

Emblem logo design style

With this logo design style, text is used inside a symbol in creating the logo so that the two are inseparable. In most of such designs, they look like official badges or seals, and they are predominantly used by political and government organization. However, they have also been used for branding by some well-known corporate entities like Ford, Starbucks, Harley Davidson amongst others. These logos are flexible and also look more compact thus giving strong graphical representation of the image of the company as well as the name.

Brandmark logo design style

Symbols have been used by some top brands to express an idea more effectively than words or text. This is the essence of brandmark logo design style. This logo design style uses just a symbol or an icon to give the target audience a clear image of the company’s identity without using a single word. This is has been the secret behind the success of some global companies whose products are easily recognized by consumers in multiple countries, irrespective of the language.

Brandmark logo design style is also appropriate in instances where the company’s name is very long and does not provide appropriate letters for creating simple and clear initials. Some of the companies which use brandmark logos include Windows, Target, Toyota and Twitter amongst others.

Combination Mark logo design style

56% of the logos of the top brands in the world use a combination of mark and symbol in their logos. Combination Mark logo design style gives a taste of both worlds hence their popularity in most of the iconic logos in the world. They give out the name of the company while at the same time associating it with the image of the brand. Examples of such logos include Pizza Hut, XBOX 360, and Adidas.

Lettermark Logo design style (use of initials)

Simplicity is always critical when it comes to branding in general and creation of logos in specific. Lettermark Logo design style is here to help designers and clients achieve this with their logos. This logo design style is similar to woodmark in the sense that it also uses text, but it highlights the initials of the company and not the entire name.

This is the preferred logo style if your organization’s name is difficult to pronounce or if it is comprised of a very long name. For example, “IBM” looks simple and catchier compared to the full name which reads “International Business Machine”. If you anticipate that you will have a minimal space for branding, lettermark logo style would be a convenient way to maximize on size while still providing a good indication of the name of your company.

Additionally, lettermark logo style has a unique way of assigning equal visual weight to all of the letters used in the initials of the company’s name. This, in turn, makes the logo to be easily remembered by customers, thus further enhancing the effectiveness of the logo. Examples of logos designed in this style include EA Sports, CNN and IBM amongst others.

Learn if your restaurant should have a logo here!

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Enhancing your creativity is one of the ways to separate yourself from the plethora of designers around the globe. You must have a strong desire to improve continuously your design skills and levels of creatively with every project that leaves your desk. There are several ways through which you could achieve these and reading is one of them. With the advent of the internet, there are several sources where you can get quality design materials to increase your knowledge, skills as well as creativity as a graphics designer. But with all the available sources, design blogs are one of the best you will enjoy using.

Why design Blogs

Blogs are more educative, current and “friendly” than the traditional books. The blogs are updated on a regular basis. Hence, you are guaranteed of finding fresh and updated content each time you visit. This will not just enhance your creativity, but also will make you have the current news and knowledge about graphics design right at your fingertips. Additionally, the blogs offer a means of interactivity, where readers can make comments and contribute to the blog posts they just read. This is extremely beneficial since it gives designers a chance to engage one another in a constructive manner.

Also, with the blogs, you can sign up for their newsletter and monthly publications and through this, you will continue to get useful and inspiring content from the industry leaders from time to time on your inbox. Therefore, any designer serious about enhancing their creativity will find every reason to be a friend to the blogs and utilize them to improve on their design skills.

Here are the top five inspiring design blogs to keep an eye on-:

Onextrapixel

Onextrapixel should be your first port of call if you are looking for design blogs to boost your creativity. It has a good reputation for being one of the oldest design blogs as well as having some of the well-seasoned contributors in the field of graphics design. The blog provides you with lots of resources including tutorials and a wide variety of freebies on different design subjects. No matter what you would like to learn, so long as it is within the field of graphics design, you will surely find it in this blog. Due to the nature of its content, therefore, Onextrapixel is ideal for both beginners and experienced designers.

Creative Nerds

Just as the name suggests, this is the place where you find all the creative nerds in the graphics design world (pun intended). It is an awesome blog with lots of fonts, free icons and Photoshop brushes that will help you enhance your creativity as a graphics designer. It is also among the few design blogs that come along with a complete YouTube Channel where you can further enhance your creative skills by watching videos and following along through live design projects by the experts.

You the Designer

You the Designer is another terrific design blog ideal for designers at all levels. It has a wide range of inspirational design works in almost any niche you can ever think about. In addition to the inspirational design works, you will also find lots of educational materials, freebies, tutorials and ninja tips both for web and graphics design. You the Designer is conclusive and is guaranteed to give you all the inspiration you need to get started to get going as a graphics designer. Additionally, the layout of the site is quite intuitive making it easy to use to the benefit of the users.

Inspiration Feed

At this design blog, you will find the same resources as the other blogs named above, but they have additional stuff for you. Inspiration Feed brings you a lot of articles covering different topics in various niches as well as relevant industry news that you ought to know as a graphics designer. This is also the one of the best places on the internet to go to if you are a graphics designer in need of great resources for startups, social media services, and general business motivation. Just as the name suggest, this should be your favorite place where you get your daily drip of inspiration as far as graphics design is concerned.

Graphic Design Blender

If you are a freelance graphics designer, or you are aspiring to become one, then you will find the Graphics Design Blender to be very resourceful. It is dedicated to offering freelance graphic designers with great tips on how to ply their trade in the turbulent but lucrative freelancing industry. Discussed in this blog are all matters relating to the freelancing industry such as dealing with tough clients, how to overcome your fears and start your business, where and how to land your first graphics design clients and many more.

Be a regular visitor to these inspirational graphics design blogs and get the fuel and the nourishment to be your best every day as a graphics designer.

Check out whether it is worth entering graphic design competitions here!

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Quite often, designers rely on color combination to create various effects in their designs. This is not always a joy ride for most designers since a wrong combination would spell doom for the entire project. Whereas there are graphics design color tools and other resources to help designers get the color combination right, some are still not able to come up with the appropriate color shades. As you juggle your way around with the colors, here are some of the terrible color combinations you should always avoid-:

All green backgrounds with green, yellow or purple on the foreground

You might be tempted to think that having two colors with almost similar hues is a long gone concept, but you will be surprised to find tens of designers still doing it at this present time and age. Green and yellow colors have always been nice choices for landscape graphics, but using only these two colors in the design will compromise its visual appeal and readability. Green and yellow are two close together and will never give any great results. It becomes even worse should you decide to add a green background to it.

Light colors against a white background

Using light colors on a white background is another poor color combination that many designers like making in the course of their designs. It needs no special sense to know that the color white is already a light color, and so there is no way you can lay another light color on top of it. Such a design will require a lot of straining for people to read the content, even if all the text were to be made bold. This is where you need to remember the use of contrasting colors in design so that you come up with combinations that will be legible enough to all that see the design.

Rainbow or neon colors

You may wonder how eye-catching colors such as neon and rainbow colors can make a poor color combination. Well, it is true that they are very bright and easily recognizable, but only when used for lighting adverts at night. In graphic designs, neon and rainbow colors are irritating and very aversive. They make the eyes get tired quickly leading to lose of focus and attention on the design, and this takes away some of the reasons behind effective graphics design. Additionally, they will end up causing more negative feelings instead of the positive ones that designers want associated with the designs.

Textured, colored backgrounds with colored text

Using textured or colored background with a colored text is another irritating poor color combination that should be avoided at all costs. It’s not only in design that this happens but also it is a common occurrence in advertising. The problem with this type of poor color combination is that it jumbles up everything in the design making it impossible to see the images or read the text. If you have to use such a combination, then it would be advisable to play around with the opacity, or probably turn it down completely so that the colored text written above the textured background may become legible. However, this poor color combination should be avoided at all cost.

Purple, blue or red with a black ground

Colors red, blue or blue will never work well against a black background. If you use a text with these colors against a black background, no one will ever manage to read them. As a matter of fact, no text of any color will ever work against a black background. Preferably, you may consider using white or colored boxes if you have to adopt this poor color combination, but only for a line or two. Black is a very strong color and will overpower any color on the foreground making such a combination very terrible and poor combination.

Using white gradients with white text

Using white gradient with white text is another recipe for poor color combination. If you use gradients well, they will give you terrific results, but you have to be careful when using them so that you don’t hurt the entire design. It is not advisable to use the same gradient with the same text on the same design. It is true that the design might end up begin readable, but the overall look with be awful. It will also demonstrate that you lack creativity in color combination since you could only use the same gradient and the same text in the design.

Learn how to update your logo with a few subtle changes here!

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Unless you are a designer who has specialized in the creation of the vintage black and white designs, you will most certainly have to use an assortment of color tools to make the process of choosing and playing around with colors easier for you. Here are some of the best free color tools that every graphic designer should add to their design arsenal-:

Color Hexa

Color Hexa is a cool color tool for both graphics and web designers. This tool enables you to get all the information you need about a particular color. It will let you know if the color is safe for the web and also suggest for you shades, schemes, and stints that will possible blend well with that color. Additionally, it presents you with various color codes and also help you visualize how the visually impaired will see the color.

Color Hunter

Just as the name of the tool suggests, this graphics design color tool will go out hunting color information for you. All you have to do is to enter either the image URL or upload an image to the tool then it will produce a comprehensive color palette for the image. The Color Hunter tool is an awesome tool if you are looking for inspirations for an image or an artwork project.

Check My Colors

Check My Color is a free color tool which makes it easy for designers to get the right color combination for backgrounds and foregrounds for various dome elements and help in deciding if the applied contrast is okay or not. Though the tool is primarily designed for web designers, a graphic designer working on projects intended for use in websites will find it an amazing tool as well. This is not to mention artists interested in working with large advertisement projects such as posters and banner advertisements.

ColorZilla

ColorZilla is an extension for both Chrome and Firefox browsers. It is one of the must have color tools for both web and graphic designers. It allows you to pick any color on your computer screen with great precision then all you have to do is to copy paste the color into your designs.

Contrast Studio

If you have any problems setting the colors of your design, or you want to be sure about the readability of the text you use, then this is the right color tool for you. The Contrast Studio will grade the contrast of the colors you are interested in using then make for you a helpful suggestion regarding the best ways to apply those colors to your designs.

TinEye Labs

TinEye Labs is an awesome color tool for those interested in using images of specific colors in layouts or when making mockups for their designs. With this tool, all you have to do is to pick a color then it will make useful suggestions on cool images that are likely to do well with your designs. No need to worry about the copyrights of the images provided by this tool since they all belong to the Creative Common images.

Color Names

Most graphic designers know colors by just observing them or mastering their color codes, but they are never sure about the specific names of the colors they use. If you want to increase your proficiency in color names, then this is the right tool you will ever need. The tool has up to 147 colors whose names you can learn so that you name them properly all the time. This will help you become a better designer so that you can impress your fellow peers or probably your date when she walks into the studio and asks you the name of some colors.

Spy Color

Spy Color is another awesome free color tool that every designer needs to have. It offers distinct information about any color including the various conversion models such as CMYK, RGB, etc. With every color page, the designer will get variations in schemes such as clash, triadic, monochromatic, complimentary and analogous colors amongst others

Mudcube Color Sphere

With Mudcube Color Sphere, you get a chance to know all hex numbers for all the colors so that you develop a compact and a comprehensive color scheme for the various shades you are interested in using. MudCube Color Sphere has lots of themes to choose from, and it can be a very handy and useful resource for beginners just starting out with colors in graphics design.

These free color tools for graphics designers and web designers will help you immensely in mastering colors and increasing your proficiency in using colors for different design applications.

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