How to Turn a Busy Logo into Stamp-Ready Artwork Without Losing Its Identity
A good stamp version is not a shrunken logo. It is a careful translation of the same identity. A logo can look excellent on a website and still make a terrible rubber stamp. That is not a contradiction, and it does not mean the logo is badly designed. A screen can display hairline rules, soft shadows, overlapping colors, tiny lettering, and subtle changes in tone. A stamp has a much rougher job. It has to press one layer of ink onto paper, often at a size no larger than a coin, and remain recognizable after the paper absorbs a little of that ink. The usual mistake is to treat the stamp as one more place to paste the master logo. Someone exports the full-color artwork, changes it to black, shrinks it to 30 millimeters, and sends it to a manufacturer. The proof may look acceptable when enlarged on a monitor. The first physical impression tells the truth: counters fill in, fine lines disappear, small text closes up, and the icon becomes a dark knot. The better approach is to...