Create your own logo

A company logo is a simple and powerful way to help customers recognize your business and add a professional touch to your online and printed business materials, such as your Web site, stationery, and business cards.

Many larger companies hire graphic design teams to create their logos. But, even if you are your own one-person marketing team, you can still have a great logo. In fact, creating your own company logo may be much easier than you expect.

This article provides best practices for creating a logo image to use on your Web site as well as help for creating your own logo from scratch. For information about adding an existing logo to your Web site, see Branding your site with your company logo.

• Choose the best image file format for your logo

• Create your logo using PowerPoint

Choose the best image file format for your logo

Although many company logos contain professionally designed graphic elements, some of the most successful logos are images created primarily from formatted text. Even if your logo is entirely text, however, you have more control and better results when you create the logo as an image instead of typing and formatting the text directly on your Web page.

• The number of fonts compatible for use on Web sites is small compared to the number of fonts that are available in most of the software programs that you use. This is why you may see the same fonts used repeatedly when you surf the Web. Office Live Small Business makes many of those Web-friendly fonts available when you design or edit your Web pages. However, when you create your logo in another program (such as Microsoft Office PowerPoint or a graphics program) and save it as an image, you can use any font available in that program, and visitors to your site will see the logo the way that you created it.
• Creating an image for text logos is especially important if you use fonts for languages that use character sets other than those used for the Latin alphabet, such as fonts available for text in East Asian languages. Remember that not all visitors to your Web site will have the same editing languages enabled on their computers. So, if you use a font for typed text on your Web site that is available because of language settings on your computer, your logo may not appear as you intended to some visitors.

To create your own logo, you can use any graphics program that you own and then export the graphic in one of the image file formats mentioned earlier. Note that most graphics programs provide the option to make the image background transparent if you save the file in the GIF or PNG format.

The best quality image format for your logo depends on the type of content and formatting in your logo, and the program that you used to create it. For best results, you may want to export your logo to more than one image file format in order to compare quality. It is a good idea to see how the image renders both on your Web site and when you print the Web page. If you have access to more than one Web browser, you may want to check the appearance of your logo on your Web page in multiple browsers to get the best idea of what viewers will see.

Additionally, if you intend to use your logo on printed business materials as well as on your Web site, note that the format that provides the best image quality for your printed materials may not be the same as the best file format for your Web site logo.

 Note   For some types of graphic content, a PNG picture file may provide better image quality than a GIF file. However, visitors to your Web site may see a box around your PNG logo (instead of a transparent background) if they use Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 to view Web pages. Most Web browsers, including Windows Internet Explorer 7, support transparency for PNG files. For more information about how to use PNG files in Internet Explorer 6, see the Microsoft Knowledge Base article PNG Files Do Not Show Transparency in Internet Explorer.

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Create your logo using PowerPoint

One easy approach for creating great-looking logos and saving them as images is to use Microsoft Office PowerPoint. If you work in either Office PowerPoint 2003 or Office PowerPoint 2007, you can follow the steps provided here. However, note that Office PowerPoint 2007 provides many more advanced graphic formatting effects for text and objects, such as reflections, 3-D rotation, and bevels.

 Note   In addition to the method described here for creating your logo in Office PowerPoint, remember that you can use almost any graphics program that you own to create your logo and save it as an image file.

To start, apply a blank slide layout in PowerPoint and then insert text boxes, shapes, or pictures on the slide.

1. To apply a blank slide layout in Office PowerPoint 2007, on the Home tab, in the Slides group, click Layout and then click Blank. To do this in Office PowerPoint 2003, on the Format menu, click Slide Layout. Then, in the Slide Layout task pane, under Content Layouts, click the blank layout.

    Note    Starting with a blank slide layout and inserting your own objects is best for creating a logo, because the placeholders that are automatically provided on PowerPoint layouts cannot be grouped with other objects.

2. Insert text boxes, WordArt, shapes, or images as needed to create your logo. You can access these elements on the Insert tab in Office PowerPoint 2007 or the Drawing toolbar in PowerPoint 2003.

 Note   If you are working in Office PowerPoint 2007, you can apply WordArt formatting to text in any text box or shape. Find formatting options (including advanced formatting effects such as bevels and reflections) on the Drawing Tools Format tab, which is visible whenever you select a text box or shape. To apply formatting effects to text, use the WordArt Styles group on this tab. To apply formatting effects to shapes and lines, use the options in the Shape Styles group.

3. If your logo includes multiple objects, group the objects together. To do this, select all objects to include in your logo. Then, right-click the selection, point to Group, and then click Group.
4. Select your logo. Then, right-click the edge of your logo and click Save as Picture. In the Save as Picture dialog box, browse to the location where you want to save the image file and type a file name for your logo.

 Note   If you do not see the Save as Picture option when you right-click, you may have clicked on the slide itself or into a text box. To ensure that your logo is selected when you right-click, hover over the edge of the logo object and then, when the mouse pointer looks like a four-pointed arrow, right-click.

5. To save the file in an image format other than the default, click the Save as Type list at the bottom of the Save as Picture dialog box and then select the image file format that you prefer. Click Save to save the image file and close the dialog box.

    Note   The default file format provided in the Save as Picture dialog box is usually the best picture format for the type of content that you are saving. However, when you save Office PowerPoint objects as images, PNG frequently provides the best image quality. Both PNG and GIF files are saved with transparent backgrounds when you use the Save as Picture feature. However, GIF files may not provide high image quality for Office PowerPoint objects.

6. Save the Office PowerPoint file in which you created your logo, in case you want to edit the logo later or decide to save the logo in a different image format.

After you have created your logo, add it to your Web site as well as to all your printed business materials. Your logo is an important part of your brand identity and an easy way to help build visual recognition for your company that sets you apart from your competition.

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