Bio's logo-making guide
You should stick to no more than 3 colors (not including transparency. Notice how I said "transparancy", very different from "translucency" with which it's often confused), preferably based on primary or secondary printing colors (CMYK). Gradients are a big no-no unless you halftone and dither. (which in some cases can look OK at a high enough resolution such as printing but are generally look abysmal)
When you finish your logo, at least 4 versions should be delivered:
- A high-resolution, full-color PNG (I use 4096xX pixles)
- A medium-resolution GIF or PNG (I use 1280xX pixels) for letterhead and other print applications, such as brochures and advertiesments.
- Same sizes as above, but in black and white. Using dithering here can be kind-of tricky due to the low effective accuracy of the presses cheap b&w stuff is usually printed on. It all depends on what kind of risk you are willing your customer to take. If they take your logo and spend hundreds of dollars on printing business cards and they look like crap, good luck getting thier business again.
- A really really small GIF (I usually go Xx128) for use on the internet. Dithering isin't so much of a problem here but since it's a GIF (don't try PNG, it's not highly supported enough, especially if you are trying to use it's sole useful feature; translucency) you can't get PNG-like translucency.
Sure you can bend the rules a bit depending on the situation, but these are my general guidelines. I'm sure Risen could give a much better explanation.
Now before you whine about what you think, I work very closely with many professional graphic artists so I know these things about logo-making.
I also understand that this is a tiny group that probably doesn't need things like brochures and letterhead, but I'm a purist.
