Thursday, November 5, 2009

The Education of a Logo

Recently I've been doing a lot of logo work and I wanted to talk about how the whole process should work. Most people think a logo is a simple thing to produce. That it could be done in a few hours and really shouldn't cost that much money.

First the client really needs to define who/what they are. What is the logo for? How is it going to be used? What are your competitors logos like? Are your competitors logos really viable? What makes you unique? These are all questions that I ask when starting the process of developing a logo. Sometimes I have clients that come to me and say "I don't know what I want, but I want it to be red". Really? Why Red? "No real reason, just because it's my wife favorite color." This is not a good reason. Honestly most people don't care what your wife thinks.

Most people see the start of their identity as their logo and for the most part this is correct. The logo is what most people see first before they ever step foot in your business so it's one of the most important items in defining who you are. I've had clients come to me and say do what ever you want (of course this is always a bad sign - it's a sign of a client that has no idea who they really are or they just don't care). You can't really expect a designer to define you if you can't define yourself. Do the homework and get knee deep in it.

Once I have all the information I need from the client I start sketching and brainstorming and building ideas. The one thing I'm really trying to do is to define several different directions this logo could go. I prefer the elements of a logo to have meaning and I have to know that the finished piece is going to have appeal to the appropriate audience. All this back and fourth, beating ideas up and then bringing them back to life happens in the studio (luckily because some of the stuff belongs in the pasture with the cows). This is the part the clients don't get to see. They don't get to see the bad ideas that helps get us to the great ideas.

From here I pick the top few ideas and present them to the client. We have conversations about the font (serif or sans serif). We talk about colors and the overall impression that a logo will give. Hopefully after that is all said and done I'm on the way back to the computer to refine a couple of strong ideas. After the ideas are flushed out and the client is happy this is really where we start perfecting color. Too many people get hung up on color from the beginning and personally a lot of times I will only show a logo idea in black and white to star. I can't tell you how many times I've had clients not like a logo because of the color - they weren't even seeing the concept.

Once a logo is chosen and the colors are refined I create final art in several different formats. Depending on the client we will also produce usage guidelines that shows anyone that would be using this logo what's appropriate. So next time you think doing a logo is as simple as hiring your next door neighbor for $100 you might want to really consider if that's what's best for you and the future of your company. You might want to think of what the real value of your logo is.

How Design Has Changed Me


This morning I was thinking about what I was like when I first started my own design studio. This was 15 years ago so it's been awhile. The main thing that I grabbed onto in my trip down memory lane was what I used to think being a graphic designer truly meant.

Back then I thought being a graphic designer meant making stuff look cool. That's it, if I couldn't make it look cool (at least to my standards) it was some lame client that just didn't know what was good for them. Over time I slowly matured, I slowly begin to realize that my job was to really figure out what my clients goal was, what they wanted to accomplish with this piece I was producing. Believe it or not for the first few years I was doing stuff that just looked cool. I know it's hard to imagine, but so much of my work was for night clubs and the music industry and the main goal reall was to just get someone's attention. I was doing my job, but it had truly little design merit.

In the past decade I've been truly looking at concept and function and for the most part everything I have done is cool in its own way. I learned that I really have to live in my clients industries and learn to define my client as a leader. It's their business, they know what they need, but it's my job to make sure it has a concept and that it is graphically pleasing and functional. I love what I do and I can't imagine having any other background then I have. The preconceptions and mistakes in my past have made me who I am today. I think my clients would agree that not every design studio is created equal.