logo debate question

[Ladydragon]

I've worked on my website, and have been trying to design my logo. My sister, who went to school for graphic design, told me that you can't use a photo for a logo or as part of a logo.

My question is, how true is this? is there a set rule for making a logo that states that you can't use a photo as part of your logo or is this not so. please help me with this. thanx for your help. Any opinions and suggestions are greatly appreciated.

[RichardA]

I think using a pic for a true "logo" is not really accepted. A logo is more of a graphic rendering that you then trademark as yours. Like Adams 8ball and RDRs coiled snake with the crown.

[Adam_Wysocki]

I would think that the reason is cost ... reproducing photo quality logos for marketing materials (business cards, brochures, shirts, etc) is many many times more expensive than a graphic with 1-4 colors.

In the end, it's your logo ... you can do ANYTHING you want which is the cool part of owning your own business ... but trust be, the anything you want part doesn't always line up with the what's financially practical for a small business as I have learned many many time.

Hope this helps.

-adam

[Ladydragon]

thanx guys. food for thought and things to consider. I'll keep working on it. anybody else with ideas, bring em on. I can use all the help and ideas as I can.

[Nate]

Take a look around you in your home at everything with some sort of logo... Every brand you see is a flat cartoonish image, yes?

Just a few things that surround me that have no images:
Bank of America logo: blue and red
Pepperidge Farm Goldfish - illustrated barn
Goldfish logo - Black and brown
Samuel Adams OctoberFest - lots of colors but no photographed images - everything is illustrated
Adobe logo

just naming off a few things I see in my general area...

Adam is right...anything you want your logo to be, it can be.

But your sister is also correct in that you don't really want to put a photo in a logo. A lot of people will trace an image in vector and make it a flat 1 or 2 colored image

[m00kfu]

Another reason has to do with scaling. Pictures are a raster based graphic, and if you scale them too far up or down it really degrades the quality. A vector based graphic is what most designers recomend. These can be scaled up and down almost infinitely with no degradation to quality. Of course, this doesn't really matter until you get into the printing aspects of it like Adam was talking about. Most print shops prefer to work with vector based graphics because of this.

[Patrick Long]

What I would suggest is do somethin almost like I did.

Your main logo on your homepage has an image in it.....becuase it looks cool.

But you have a second Logo that you use for shirty, small banners etc with no image.

[FIREball]

I started with a main logo abd have added to it twice for different situations...

[JasonG]

Adam nailed it... It would cost way to much to print a full color logo on everything verses a 3 or 4 color logo...

Just keep in mind when designing a logo to design it in 300 DPI so it can be printed on anything. And to make sure your source material, whether its clipart or stock images, is also 300 dpi....

[Ladydragon]

kewl.. thanx guys. valid points to keep in mind. if you click on the link in my sig, it will take you to my web site and at the bottom of the main page you can see two logos I was playing around with... but not satisifed with either. I will try to play around again with some more ideas and see if something finally makes me happy. I know that I should follow the main rule of K.I.S.S. but sometimes my creativity gets the better of me. thanx again guys, I just love this forum.