a few more things about logos

Putting a logo on something gets more complicated, and more expensive, when there are multiple colors.

Let me show you what I mean.

Here is the logo for Colonial Spirits. Colonial Spirits is a very nice wine, spirits and beer store in Acton Mass.










This is a 3 color logo. The text is maroon and is outlined in a dark blue. The Minute Man is dark blue and a gray blue.

Here's the first thing to notice; the maroon text outlined in dark blue.
It would be virtually impossible to screen print this. Why? You would first put down the maroon ink for the text. Then you would put down the dark blue outline. But look, there is no space between the two colors. They are right next to each other.
This is called "registration." You could not get the screen for the blue outline to consistently align with the text. Even the most accurate screen printing can't get closer than 1/32" registration with most needing 1/16"
If you did that to this logo you would lose the effect of outlining the text.

You would have the same problem trying to print the Minute Man. The colors are again too close.

So how do you capture this logo on a promotional item?

Colonial Spirits ordered wine glasses to have for their tastings. The glasses  weren't meant to be gifts, just used in-store for the tastings. So for that use they decided that it was not critical to reproduce the entire logo. Here's their solution:



They screen printed just their name, in their maroon color and left out the blue outline.











The other glass they ordered was a whiskey glass. This also was for in store tastings. In this case the glasses were going to be given to their customers. This glass needed to have the full color logo.

                                                                             Here's how it looked:




The whiskey glass has the full color logo. How was it done?
We used a decal. This way the logo can be printed directly on the decal material and then applied to the glass. There's no need to worry about registration since the decal is a digital print - much the same as printing on paper.

It's a bit more expensive but it allows all the details of the logo to be captured.

Takeaway: Anticipate how you may be using your logo on promotional products. Have several different versions of your logo. Decide, in advance, how you want your logo to appear if you can only use 1 color.
Decide, in advance, how you want your logo to appear if it is long and horizontal. If you have a tag line,
or a service or trade mark these will often be too small to be legible - can you use your logo without them?