Every website has a logo, whether as text, graphic, or a combination of the two. Logos in web design serve many purposes, and are a very important foundational element that now web designer should ever overlook. Regardless of the quality of your logo design, the logo element on any website can act as a grounding label of reference for any website visitor. It helps any visitor immediately know what website they have visited, allows quick navigation to the homepage of the website, conveys information about the brand that owns the website, and helps guide the user’s actions on the website based on the name of the company within the logo or the meaning of the image graphic within the logo.

Logos come in several different varieties which are each variations of using font, symbols or icons, and details vs abstract approaches to conveying the message. Take the Nike swoosh logo for example, this is a good use of an abstract icon graphic that is now easily associated with the name, but the name normally doesn’t appear with the swoosh. Another useful example to think about is the Starbucks logo. Starbucks uses several variations of their logo depending on the location and medium the logo is being used in. On Starbucks coffee cups for instance they show just the iconic image of the mermaid girl with the graphics on either side of her. While on the outside of many Starbucks stores you might only see the text font of the logo spelling out Starbucks without any graphic. Then lastly they’ll represent their logo using both the text and icon either integrated into a single graphic or with the text name spelled out below the or to the right of the icon image.

Designing a logo can be performed in several ways, by a single graphic designer, or with the help of multiple people playing different roles in the process. Because creating a logo can involve graphic design, it can be considered a form of art and therefore deserves respect as such. Although not all logo designs actually require any artistic input because in the absence of a graphical logo, any typographic font displaying the name of the company technically is the logo of the brand within the context of a web design. Many Graphic Designers have a structured process that may involve presenting several concept designs to a client, from which the client may select the best concept followed by further iterations of that concept. Other designers may simply collect appropriate information about the business or brand and then after deliberating and designing present a finalized version of the logo that they’ve concluded would be best for the brand, take it or leave it.

If you decide to have a logo design created for your company or brand, be sure to ask your graphic designer to describe how their particular design process will work and what expectations you should have. Questions you could ask would include:

• What information they’ll want know about your brand?
• How long from start to finish they expect the design process from take?
• How many concepts and revision rounds will be allowed during the process?
• What means of communication will be used to provide feedback on designs?
• What files and formats of the final design will be presented once it’s completed?
• What additional considerations should be understood in order for you to use your new business logo design correctly?
• Will the graphic designer provide certain standard variations of your logo so that it can be easily incorporated into your web design, social media profiles, and in other formats?