Cowlbeck on Logos and Fine Detail

Chris Cowlbeck is a busy guy.  He runs  Look Billboards a rural Oklahoma out of home company as well as the IBOUSA.  In his spare time Chris moonlights as a scarecrow and blogs on billboard ad design at his company’s website.  Today Chris writes about logos and billboard design.  

A good corporate logo may not look good on a billboard. Corporate logos look great on paper in front of us on the flyers, cards, and letterhead, or within 18” of our faces while looking at a website, or even on TV.  The problem is that the further you get away from cursive lettering, the harder it is to discern.  We use a simple test of backing 30 feet away from the computer screen to evaluate the design for clarity.  If you can’t grab the parts of the design instantly, improvement is in order.

Here’s an good example of a nice letterhead logo but a poor billboard logo.

We used the logo initially in the the billboard ad below.  Looks great on the screen but if you back up 30 feet “The Cellar” fades from view as you go back, and the curlies around the grapes disappear while the grapes, blob up.  We ran this for a while and then determined that it wasn’t as effective as we would like.

Look below to see the finished billboard design.  The font has been changed to reflect a stylish, yet more legible shape, the yellow color more saturated to take advantage of the eye-catching vibrancy of the digital billboards; in the billboard layout the enlargement and simplification of the image of the grapes which ties into her overall theme of wine.  Now go back and do the test and see how much more effective a modified logo can be, all while not really deviating or confusing the customers with another completely different logo.

 

 

 


Paid Ad

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Comments are closed.