Logo Design Studio
How Can Logo Designers Avoid Plagiarism
It’s a fact all too easy to ignore. Inexperienced designers (and the companies that uses them) frequently get stung by the legal minefield that surrounds logo design. Logo Designer houses are quick to sell the virtues of brand identity as the basis of business success. Beyond the portfolio, a design website is often a catalogue of rhetoric on where using them has taken others, and where it will take you. The undercurrent to the rhetoric though is that logo design is so important to business that a challenge to the outward face could meet with serious consequences. But are the expectations of originality all that fair? Can we expect a Logo Maker to come up with designs that are indisputably original when virtually every business these days, big or small, has a somewhat unique logo? What limitations does a logo designer work up against when it comes to legal restriction?
A truly excellent logo designer sees design everywhere, and is an active part of their industry. They’re addicted to their industry, checking websites, updating their own, and always noting every new development in logo design. There’s an element of inspiration sourcing behind this, but they know when the line has been crossed. In design, ‘simple’ has long been an aesthetic goal. But it’s a somewhat double edged sword. The problem with simplicity is that it further restricts the originality of new designs. On the other, the many elements of logo design (font, colour, special effects) can be endlessly recombined to avoid infringement. The most successful designs are the ones that cannot and shouldn’t be approach by any ‘switched on’ designer. These companies also happen to be the ones that will happily bring you into court for the vaguest of infringements. But those who think that this somehow makes ‘the little guy’ a fair target are almost always going to find themselves brought to heel by the mob justice of the internet.
Legal issues and logo design as a topic also brings up the issue of font usage. It is important to draw only from a font library that explicitly allows design agencies to replicate and modify a typeface. Check the End User License Agreement.
Logo Design Studio Pro by Summitsoft: Tutorial