Every company needs a great logo, but how much do they cost? How long will it take to get one? How big will it be? How many colors will it have? What will it look like?
A logo is not just a set commodity. A logo is the result of a process. Here is an explanation of our logo design process…
Information gathering
We meet with the client and find out their specific needs and goals.
- How will the logo be used? Website, brochures, billboards, uniforms? We may need a simple logo to meet certain requirements.
- Who is the audience? We really focus the design on the client’s customer and not on the client’s taste.
- What do we want to communicate about the company?
- We like to get a list of adjectives.
- Are there any logos that the client loves or hates? This gives us an idea of the vide that may work.
Research and sketches
We spend time creating getting inspiration, drawing several ideas, and revising the marks and text. It’s good to throw a bunch of ideas out there, let it set, and look at them with fresh eyes. Perhaps not every idea will work in the end, but exploring is part of the process.
Sometimes the idea we thought would work doesn’t but it gives us a better idea. This stage is the most creative part of the process.
Initial Design Comps
We present our initial comps in black and white, so the client can compare “apples to apples”. Sometimes we present just 3, fairly refined logos, but sometimes we present pages of ideas. It depends on how specific the client was in our information gathering phase.
It’s best to present face to face or in some live fashion. We want to gage to reaction and explain the idea of each mark. The process is totally informed by this event. The feedback can be in equal value to the designs presented. Nothing is worse that just emailing pdfs of designs and getting and email back with the selection.
Revision and Refinement
A direction in chosen form the initial comps and now needs to be refined. This is the stage when colors are explored and perfected. Fonts are revised and selected. Illustrations are created.
This might take a couple of rounds, but with every decision, the logo gets closer to being finished.
Final Logo
Once the logo is ready, clients will need several versions of the logo. You may need a black versions, a white version (for dark backgrounds), a version with a tagline, a version with just the mark, a spot color version, a CMYK version, a square version, a horizontal version, and versions in various files types for print and web.
More advanced branding projects will need a style guide to let vendors know how the brand needs to be presented.
As you can see, a logo is a result of a process.
It may not be as you imagined it, but it will always be based on the goals and needs communicated in the beginning of the process.
