Logos are very important, they represent your company and when someone sees that logo they will associate that with your business. Getting the right logo can be extremely difficult, logos need to fun and interesting however, they are logos and not pieces of art. This needs to be remembered and is quite frequently, if we take a look at 5 popular companies and compare their logos.
Apple
The first logo is Apple, just because their products are so great and they are a very successful company. Their logo is a simple apple with a bite mark out of it. There is no set colour scheme for the logo and if anything this has helped massively with the creation of their products. Because of the blank colour palette, they are not restricted with their designs and can create any gadget in any colour and it will look good.
McDonalds
McDonalds have been around for a while and are a worldwide fast food restaurant chain that has been the cause of full stomachs, perhaps to full, for many users now. The m logo is on a red background and the m is a yellow, these colours are warm and if anything inviting. These colours do restrict them in their products or restaurant decoration. In the past Ronald McDonald fit perfectly to the fast food colours, but as the restaurant developed, the clown was slowly ditched along with the restaurants décor. Now it seems that the yellow m is only displayed on their food as restaurants have taken on a more modern approach. The McDonalds logo is very simple however the red and yellow colours have restricted them somewhat, it seems that they cannot have the freedom of themes and also have their logo, so the solution has been to display the logo on a minimum amount of things.
Google
The internet search giant has a logo of course, just the name of the engine in a mixture of: red, blue, yellow and green colours. These colours are very basic and although they have created a colour scheme for the big G, these colours are not restricting because they can work with not only each other, but also: black, grey, white and anything in between. If you hunt around Google and their endless amount of products, the colour scheme of red blue yellow and green have been incorporated, this is because they represent Google very well and due to four colours being covered, the amount of restriction is quite low.
Facebook
Facebook has two versions of their logo but it is either: a white F in a blue box, or Facebook in white text which is in a blue box. This is a very simple logo and also easy to remember, not only that but it is incorporated religiously throughout the site and there is very little on Facebook which cannot be customised that does not follow this pattern. The blue and white colour scheme is very restricting, that being said, Facebook have stuck with it and have claimed the blue and white combination as theirs. Granted there are other companies that use this scheme but Facebook are recognised by almost anyone to have used this scheme.
Microsoft
Similarly to Google, Microsoft also follow the red, yellow, blue and green colour scheme. Their logo is in the shape of a window, maybe due to Microsoft Windows? Their logo creates a very similar situation to Google, however Microsoft predominantly create software as opposed to an online service, which means that they are somewhat limited in the colour schemes they can use to represent them programs, for example: outlook is yellow, word is blue, excel is green, and Powerpoint is red, so in this sense Microsoft have limited themselves if they wish to keep their colour scheme because they cannot use the same logo for different programs as it would confuse users.
Conclusion
Picking the correct logo is essential, take into consideration the present, past and future of your business. If you pick a very complex image for your logo you will find yourself very restricted if you need to make changes or expand as a business in the future. The simpler your logo the more opportunity it has and the less restricted you will find your business which will help greatly in terms of web design.
