A logo is not just a picture. A logo embodies a company’s hopes, goals, ideas, and intentions. It’s a thousand words contained into a simple shape. The logo serves as the public image for a company and as a representation of the owners’ beliefs. It also projects the emotions and intentions of the people who work for this company. Basically saying, a logo is very important to your establishment and you should treat the process of creating it with extreme attention and care.
Designing a logo is very hard. Unlike other forms of design, I never go into designing a logo with any idea of what I’m going to present to a client. This is because the idea of a logo is to be as unique and original as possible. While current trends serve as a major driving force for many print and digital design mediums, logos must be designed with utter sincerity and originality; pulling away trends for inspiration.
Like many design mediums, I start the process of logo design with a discovery meeting and project brief. Understanding the company’s brand and what a client expects their logo to convey is a very strong and important point. With a clear objective, I begin by researching the hell out of my subject. Mind mapping from every possible standpoint is important to understanding how the client visions their own company, versus how their target audience and competitors see the company. It leads me to ask:
- What are symbols that relate to this?
- What are definitions that relate to this?
- What are colors that relate to this?
- What are letters that relate to this?
- What are lines, shapes, and strokes that relate to this?
Jumping ahead, the client is presented with several concepts to see how well they resonate. It’s important to present concepts before design because getting caught in “revision hell” (designing one logo after another after another) is a very real thing. After gathering feedback from the client on concepts, and hopefully an approval for a clear direction, I proceed into designing.
A good logo should be simple, versatile, memorable, and convey the brand’s sincerity. A great logo would be one that is timeless. Take a few seconds to think about the logos of these companies: Coca Cola, UPS, Nike, McDonalds. The logos appear immediately and clearly in your mind, right? You remember their colors, shapes, and sizes. It’s because these logos are great and do what a company hopes their logo will do, and more. I keep all these ideas in mind when proceeding with the difficult task of logo design.
So when you start a company or a cause, and need a logo to represent your organization, please don’t have your cousin design it for $50. Take some time to understand what you want and need your logo to do, and talk to designers who share a passion for projecting ideas into simple and effective forms. Your logo is your entire history and future distilled into the equivalent size of a 25 cent-piece, it’s imperative that you do it right.
