If you are building a website you know that you are going to need a professional logo design. The problem that many companies forget is that there could be a need to produce a logo that can be used both for web use as well as print materials. If you want a logo that is going to be able to be used for display in stationary, webpages, business cards, posters and signage you need to have a very versatile product. Here are some top considerations that you should keep in mind with your logo to make sure that it can transfer to print from online designs.

File types:

One of the best styles of logo to use if you are planning on recreating or regularly printing your logo on a wide array of materials is a vector file. This type of output can be commonly created in programs such as indesign. The nice part about this file format is that you can scale your logo design to almost any size without the image losing its crisp nature. This means that you won’t end up with pixilation or distortion in your Logo image even if you are using it on a website or on a large scale poster. You can also make sure to save your logo in a few different file formats for future use. Png files are great for online use and they allow for 256 colors. JPG or JPEG files are just fine for sharing in word documents, powerpoint presentations and simple materials. You should never attempt to print using JPG or JPEG files as this will often lead to an unprofessional and distorted image. High resolution vector images or PNG files are a much better way to go for printing. Understanding the right file types for use with your logo is important to maintaining your brand image. Keep file types in mind especially when you are going to be recreating your logo many times over.

Consider how a logo might be seen in print vs web:

You know how your logo will be used on a webpage to display your brand culture. When you think about some of the products that you might use a print logo for example you need to approach the logo or find a place for the logo where it can be utilized in the same way. This means that if you designed your logo to be the focal point of your site, it should be front and center in your print advertising. This could mean having the logo of your company in the middle of your webpage as well as a print logo at the middle of your brochures and business cards. Maintaining consistency between your online materials and print logo materials only leads to stronger and more calculated marketing/branding solutions.

See if the message changes:

A good logo or marketing design should engage the user directly. If you are planning on using roughly the same campaign online as you would offline, make sure that your design can still engage the user regardless of where it may be shown. A great example here might be creating a billboard ad. A user may be more inclined to view a banner ad on the subject for a longer period because they don’t have to drive past a banner add while reading it. A billboard may also contain more blank space or different scaling dimensions in relation to some of your other web material. Scaling some of these items before you print them will help you to identify trouble spots and make sure that items still showcase your methods and your design well, before the printing process begins. Remember to mock up your print logo first to see how it looks on a large scale.

The layout:

The layout for your web content and your logo is bound to be a little bit different from your print content. Don’t be afraid to get creative or have a bit of variance between your print logos/content and your online content. Changing up your logo and branding just a little bit so that it presents better on a notebook or business card is not a bad thing. Just be sure that the new branded logo still reflects your original web work or vice versa. Make sure that you present a unified branding front even if you have to make small tweaks between print branding and online logo creation. This is especially true in large scale print. The layout of a website page or a banner advertisement will not often be scalable to a large scale print design. Rather than having a lot of extra blank space or design elements that simply do not resonate well in print, do some testing ahead of time and be sure to adjust the design as necessary. Use the printing space you have, just as you maximized the space available on your webpage for proper presentation.

Keep these top elements in mind when creating a logo that successfully translates across web and print.

Learn why you should avoid the use of stock images in logo design. 

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