Professional graphic design and company logos are vital aspects of creating a website.  A refined appearance brings results!

The more you perfect your image, the more it will radiate credibility.  Company logos & graphic design can be very simple...

Read these expert tips on making them great!

From colour selection and style, to size and placement...  the look & feel of your logo and graphics have a powerful effect on your visitor’s impressions.

I’ll go into more specifics below, but here are some factors you should consider for any aspect of your graphic design:

1. Style:  Always design for the tastes of your your target audience.  You may need your site’s image to be businesslike, fun, artsy, sexy, corporate, stylish, high tech, classic...  It’s worth writing out a list of adjectives for your intended style.
    
2. Color selection:  Your choice of color scheme can make a big difference to the psychological effect of your site.  More on this a little further down.
    
3. Impact:  This is another psychological factor.  You may want your site to be bold, soft, flamboyant, muted, flashy...  Again, make your choices based on your intended audience.
    
4. Size:  You may have a lightning-fast Internet connection, but some of your visitors definitely won’t.  You should aim for a maximum file size of about 50kb per page – for both text and graphics – and that usually means keeping each image small and well-optimized.
    
5. Placement:  A good page layout creates a visual hierarchy that leads the reader’s eye — first to the most important aspects, and then to the finer detail.  Your logo and graphics should fit into an overall page style that you use throughout your site.

Once you have a vision in mind, the next step is to create it:

Graphic Design Tools

Designing graphics for the web has some unique challenges.  Number one among them is file size — every graphical element on your site needs to be as quick-loading as possible, which usually has to be balanced against image quality.

Then there are colour choices.  If you want everybody to be able to view your graphics as you intended them, there is a limited palette of colors to choose from.  It takes some experience to know which colour choices will work best on a wide variety of computers and monitors.

The top choice for professional graphic design is Adobe Photoshop, but if you’re planning to do some of your own design work, Photoshop is probably too expensive and complex to justify buying.  As an alternative, you can download the Vicman Editor  for free.

As always, there is a cost tradeoff in doing your own graphic design.  When a professional designer can give you great results in a very short time, it may be much more effective to hire a pro to do your site’s design work than to go through the learning curve of doing it yourself.

In either case, there are a number of important aspects to your site’s graphics that it’s important for you to know.  The following sections go into more detail on the specifics of graphic design.

Does your company logo have credibility?

Your logo is an extremely important marketing tool.  Once somebody has seen it a number of times, it will create an association in their mind with the quality, competence, trustworthiness, and expertise of your business.

Your logo needs to symbolize your area of specialty, in a way that characterizes your best qualities.  For example, your logo can show:

• innovation
• stability
• efficiency
• leadership
• friendliness
• authority...

...whatever qualities will make you most attractive to your target market!

So the first step in logo design is to know your strengths.  Then you’ll need clear, bold symbolism that communicates your core business — and emphasizes the special strengths that your company has to offer.  The result should be clean and simple, and its meaning obvious.

Designing a company logo with credibility is a skilled art.  If you don’t want to tackle it yourself, hiring a professional designer might be your best option.

If you want an effective logo for a very low price, another option is to buy a logo template.  We have an excellent selection of templates to choose from, each of which can be customized to suit your needs.

The next factor to consider is your choice of colours:

The Psychology of Color

Choosing the right colours for your graphics and website is a vital step in the design process.  Different colors have very different psychological effects on your audience, and knowing the effect you want to create can help you in your colour selection.

The following table gives some of the basics of color psychology.  Keep in mind that colour associations can vary from culture to culture, so if you are planning a site with a global audience, make sure your designer understands your needs.

 

There are many other factors that affect color choice as well.  Avoid using overly bright colours in your website, since they tend to look garish on the computer screen.  And make sure that the colors you choose complement one another so that your site has an overall sense of harmony.

For more detail on the web design process, read my guide to working with a design professional....

....or click here for my list of top web resources for building your online business success!

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