So, you own a small business and you want a new logo for your company.
You have a small budget and would like to brief a Graphic Designer to do the work.
In the following article I will outline some tips on how to brief your chosen designer and get the best job for your money: Company History: The first section of your brief should include a brief company history, some detail about the industry that you work in.
Provide any information that you think maybe relevant.
The more information the designer has about your company the more effective his work will be.
Market Overview: What are the current trends in your marketplace? Give a list of your main competitors and detail any of their recent marketing activity that you maybe aware of.
Target Market: Who is your target market? What customers are you looking to attract with your company's product.
Give detail about gender, age range, income, lifestyle and current awareness of your products.
Key Messages: Have a think about what key messages your company is trying to convey to your customers.
Do you want to be known as an expert within your industry? Do you want to be seen as an approachable, fun, company? Are the products you sell luxury items or necessities? Design Requirements: Outline what your design requirements are.
In the case of a Logo design your requirements maybe the following: Logo / Identity required for the following company, "YourCompanyName'.
It will be used across various marketing materials including business cards, newsletters and a website.
The Logo should be designed to be easily transferable across all these mediums.
Please keep colours in the logo to a minimum to reduce printing costs.
Previous Marketing Material: If you have an old logo or any other marketing material that has been designed previously then provide a few examples of this work for the designer's reference.
Timings and Budget: Give the designer a delivery deadline for you final logo artwork and ask to be provided with a detailed work plan.
Let the designer know your budget for this project so he can plan his time appropriately.
So now you have provided your designer with a professional brief, what should you expect in return for your money? Delivery Schedule: Firstly, as mentioned above ask your designer to provide a delivery schedule.
This would normally include the date of briefing and any required consultation time, Design and Development of first concept work, a secondary development stage for any changes to initial designs and a final artwork deadline with a date for delivery of final files.
First Concepts: A designer would normally provide 3 or 4 concepts for you to choose from to develop further.
Hopefully at this stage you will have a route that your are reasonably happy with.
Don't be afraid at this stage to voice your opinion about whats working and whats not.
Secondary Concepts: At this stage hopefully you will have narrowed you options down to a coupe of design routes and the designer will develop these routes further, based on your feedback.
Final Artwork: Once a final design route is chosen the designer will artwork the final files making them print ready.
File Delivery: Once you receive the final files make sure you have the following information: Original artwork files This maybe a Illustrator.
eps file or a Photoshop.
psd file depending on what program the designer has used to create your logo.
Make sure you have this file so any future amends can be made by other designers you may use in the future.
The Photoshop file should be a Layered file and not a flattened final image so adjustments can be made.
Colours Ask the designer to provide a full colour breakdown of your logo.
This should include a CMYK* reference for print and an RGB** reference for screen + any PANTONE®*** references *CMYK explained: CMYK stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black.
These are called process colours and are the 4 main colours that the print industry uses to print most documents.
Most colours in print are created by a mixture of small dots of CMYK that make up all the other colours.
A mix of 100% Cyan and 100% Yellow dots, for example, will appear Green although there is no green ink in the print.
Next time you pick up a printed label, grab a magnifying glass and have a look to see if you can see these dots.
**RGB explained: RGB stands for Red, Green and Blue.
Every colour on your computer screen is made up of rays of Red, Green or Blue light that when mixed together create all the colours that appear on your screen.
100% of R, G and B will give you white and 0% of all 3 will give you black.
Your own RGB reference for your logo is important to keep your logo looking consistent on screen, eg.
your website or powerpoint presentations.
***PANTONE® explained: Sometimes, if designers feel that they can't achieve the correct colour using CMYK references they might choose a PANTONE colour.
This is an industry standard list that refers to colour inks that Printers use.
It is unlikely that your designer has used a PANTONE® colour.
If they have, you should ask them their reasons.
Limiting your Logo design to PANTONE® colours could possibly lead to higher printing costs as a print job might need CMYK + a PANTONE® colour.
Fonts If any fonts where used with the design make sure these are detailed to you by the designer.
It is always good to know what fonts are used within your logo design in case you decide to use this same font across your other marketing material.
The fonts may be new fonts that will cost you money to have on your own computer.
Make sure you know about this extra cost in advance.
Alternatively they maybe free fonts that you can download from a website.
You could detail in your brief that only free fonts are to be used with your design.
Also find out if the fonts are compatible with your computer.
A lot of designers use Apple Mac equipment and fonts have different formats for both PC's and Macs.
A safe bet for font types are TrueType fonts that are compatible with both systems.
File Formats As well as your original artwork files detailed above ask the designer to provide you with your logo in various formats.
Ask for a High Resolution and Low resolution Jpeg.
The High-res Jpeg can be printed high quality and sent to various people who might want to include your logo in their promotional material.
The Low-res Jpeg can be used for your Powerpoint Presentations or Word documents without making the file too big to email.
Ask for a PDF document of the file.
PDF stands for Portable Document File and can be opened by anyone who downloads the free Adobe® Reader.
In my experience Jpegs can sometimes be corrupted by email but PDFs always manage to get through without any issues.
Also get a Black and White version of all the formats stated above.
That's it.
If you have all the above information then there shouldn't be many issues when producing your marketing materials and getting them printed in the future.
You have a small budget and would like to brief a Graphic Designer to do the work.
In the following article I will outline some tips on how to brief your chosen designer and get the best job for your money: Company History: The first section of your brief should include a brief company history, some detail about the industry that you work in.
Provide any information that you think maybe relevant.
The more information the designer has about your company the more effective his work will be.
Market Overview: What are the current trends in your marketplace? Give a list of your main competitors and detail any of their recent marketing activity that you maybe aware of.
Target Market: Who is your target market? What customers are you looking to attract with your company's product.
Give detail about gender, age range, income, lifestyle and current awareness of your products.
Key Messages: Have a think about what key messages your company is trying to convey to your customers.
Do you want to be known as an expert within your industry? Do you want to be seen as an approachable, fun, company? Are the products you sell luxury items or necessities? Design Requirements: Outline what your design requirements are.
In the case of a Logo design your requirements maybe the following: Logo / Identity required for the following company, "YourCompanyName'.
It will be used across various marketing materials including business cards, newsletters and a website.
The Logo should be designed to be easily transferable across all these mediums.
Please keep colours in the logo to a minimum to reduce printing costs.
Previous Marketing Material: If you have an old logo or any other marketing material that has been designed previously then provide a few examples of this work for the designer's reference.
Timings and Budget: Give the designer a delivery deadline for you final logo artwork and ask to be provided with a detailed work plan.
Let the designer know your budget for this project so he can plan his time appropriately.
So now you have provided your designer with a professional brief, what should you expect in return for your money? Delivery Schedule: Firstly, as mentioned above ask your designer to provide a delivery schedule.
This would normally include the date of briefing and any required consultation time, Design and Development of first concept work, a secondary development stage for any changes to initial designs and a final artwork deadline with a date for delivery of final files.
First Concepts: A designer would normally provide 3 or 4 concepts for you to choose from to develop further.
Hopefully at this stage you will have a route that your are reasonably happy with.
Don't be afraid at this stage to voice your opinion about whats working and whats not.
Secondary Concepts: At this stage hopefully you will have narrowed you options down to a coupe of design routes and the designer will develop these routes further, based on your feedback.
Final Artwork: Once a final design route is chosen the designer will artwork the final files making them print ready.
File Delivery: Once you receive the final files make sure you have the following information: Original artwork files This maybe a Illustrator.
eps file or a Photoshop.
psd file depending on what program the designer has used to create your logo.
Make sure you have this file so any future amends can be made by other designers you may use in the future.
The Photoshop file should be a Layered file and not a flattened final image so adjustments can be made.
Colours Ask the designer to provide a full colour breakdown of your logo.
This should include a CMYK* reference for print and an RGB** reference for screen + any PANTONE®*** references *CMYK explained: CMYK stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black.
These are called process colours and are the 4 main colours that the print industry uses to print most documents.
Most colours in print are created by a mixture of small dots of CMYK that make up all the other colours.
A mix of 100% Cyan and 100% Yellow dots, for example, will appear Green although there is no green ink in the print.
Next time you pick up a printed label, grab a magnifying glass and have a look to see if you can see these dots.
**RGB explained: RGB stands for Red, Green and Blue.
Every colour on your computer screen is made up of rays of Red, Green or Blue light that when mixed together create all the colours that appear on your screen.
100% of R, G and B will give you white and 0% of all 3 will give you black.
Your own RGB reference for your logo is important to keep your logo looking consistent on screen, eg.
your website or powerpoint presentations.
***PANTONE® explained: Sometimes, if designers feel that they can't achieve the correct colour using CMYK references they might choose a PANTONE colour.
This is an industry standard list that refers to colour inks that Printers use.
It is unlikely that your designer has used a PANTONE® colour.
If they have, you should ask them their reasons.
Limiting your Logo design to PANTONE® colours could possibly lead to higher printing costs as a print job might need CMYK + a PANTONE® colour.
Fonts If any fonts where used with the design make sure these are detailed to you by the designer.
It is always good to know what fonts are used within your logo design in case you decide to use this same font across your other marketing material.
The fonts may be new fonts that will cost you money to have on your own computer.
Make sure you know about this extra cost in advance.
Alternatively they maybe free fonts that you can download from a website.
You could detail in your brief that only free fonts are to be used with your design.
Also find out if the fonts are compatible with your computer.
A lot of designers use Apple Mac equipment and fonts have different formats for both PC's and Macs.
A safe bet for font types are TrueType fonts that are compatible with both systems.
File Formats As well as your original artwork files detailed above ask the designer to provide you with your logo in various formats.
Ask for a High Resolution and Low resolution Jpeg.
The High-res Jpeg can be printed high quality and sent to various people who might want to include your logo in their promotional material.
The Low-res Jpeg can be used for your Powerpoint Presentations or Word documents without making the file too big to email.
Ask for a PDF document of the file.
PDF stands for Portable Document File and can be opened by anyone who downloads the free Adobe® Reader.
In my experience Jpegs can sometimes be corrupted by email but PDFs always manage to get through without any issues.
Also get a Black and White version of all the formats stated above.
That's it.
If you have all the above information then there shouldn't be many issues when producing your marketing materials and getting them printed in the future.