Good logos convey the core tenets of an organization and what that
organization does. Professional logo designers will perform industry and client
research, brainstorm ideas, and create sketches with their client while
following principles of good logo design.
Even
though they're often just small images, logos carry a whole lot of meaning --
and designing one comes with a whole lot of responsibility, too. Logos are
usually the most recognizable representation of a company or organization.
And with more information available to the average consumer today,
logos also have to quickly and effectively communicate on behalf of their
brand.
To tackle such a
complex challenge, many brands choose to hire outside help. But for those of us
who are brand new to the logo design process, working with freelancers to
design a logo can be a challenge in itself.
We thought it'd be
interesting to talk to a few of these designers who know what it's like to
create logos from scratch. From the concept stage to the final product, what
goes into designing a logo? How are designers able to capture an
organization's mission and personality into a single, simple image, especially
when they aren't a part of the organization themselves? Read on to find out.
What's in a Logo?
When a designer
first takes on a new logo project, he spends a lot of time trying
to understand both the organization and its audience. We'll get to the
process of learning what a logo needs to "say" later, but first,
let's talk about what makes a great logo in the first place.
Most logo designers follow some iteration of these principles of great logo design:
·Simplicity: Is the design
simple and clean enough to be flexible and easily recognizable? Is it not
too busy, distracting, or confusing?
·Memorability: Is
it quickly recognizable? Will people only have to spend a second or
two thinking about it to get it?
·Timelessness: Will it still
be a great logo in 10, 20, or even 50 years?
·Versatility: Does it scale
to different sizes without losing quality? Will it work across various
media and within different contexts?
·Appropriateness: Does it
resonate with the desired audience?
Graphic Designer Tyler Littwin, who creates logos for HubSpot
and other organizations, says these five principles are great
for keeping designers from going too crazy when designing a new logo.
"Designers have
a tendency to get excited about the prospect of designing stuff that looks cool
and uses cool, new styles," Tyler told me. "But when you're designing
a logo, you're ultimately solving for a problem. You're trying to convey
something simply that gets across the core tenets of an organization and what
that organization does. Keeping these five things in mind prevents you
from getting carried away with the flash of what you're doing. It keeps you
honest."
Before we get to
the design process, let's dissect two examples of great logos.
Example 1: Evernote
Evernote's logo is a great example of a logo that follows all five of
these principles. It's an elephant, which is a reference to the
well-known saying, "An elephant never forgets." The
elephant's folded ear cleverly resembles the popular document icon.
Image Credit: Graham Smith
Not only is the logo simple, memorable, and appropriate for its
audience, its physical and digital attributes work perfectly across different
media variations and usages. "There is not one application I have seen
where the logo fails to fit perfectly, all the way from the 16px favicon, the
browser extension icons in both colour and mono, the iOS icons, Macintosh dock
icon, and so on," writes Graham Smith,
a freelance designer of logos and brand identities. Plus, elephants will
never go out of style.
But it took six
weeks of concepting to come up with the simple elephant logo. Here are
other initial ideas that were produced before the elephant was chosen.
Image Credit: Graham Smith
Once the elephant was chosen, it went through another series of
iterations before the final design was chosen. The whole process took six weeks, and it's become one of the most
compelling logos today.
Example 2: Icon
Snowskates
On a smaller scale, we have Icon Snowskates, a
small snow skateboard company operated by a son and his father in
Massachusetts. (Full disclosure: The son in this father-son duo happens to
be Matt Plays, who also works on video and design projects
at HubSpot.) Seven years ago, he set out to create a logo for his young company
that had to look good on a website, but that could also work when stretched
across a 33-inch, snowboard-like base.
"I was
inspired by brands like Element Skateboards and Plan B Skateboards whose logos
are geometric and fare well on boards and on the web," Matt told me.
"I chose to use a tightly tracked Century Gothic for the type, and paired
it with a slightly abstract, inverse water droplet logo mark." Here's the
iteration that appears on the website:
Why the water
droplet? "While rain and other precipitation usually means bad news
for snowboarding, that's not the case for snow-skateboarding," says
Matt. In other words, the water droplet is exactly what differentiates his
snow-skateboarding company from snowboarding companies that have a similar vibe
and audience.
Plus, the tightly
tracked type and geometric logo work well at different sizes and in various
applications -- especially the bottom of a snowskate. "It holds up
when screen-printed, die-cut, or simply saved for web, all of which are crucial
for our brand," says Matt. Here it is on the bottom of a snowskate:
The folks at both
Evernote and Icon were able to come up with logos that keep the cornerstones of
logo design top-of-mind. Now, let's delve a little more into the design
process itself.
Designing a Logo:
The Process
While the design
process can vary from designer to designer, Tyler Littwin shared his process
with me. Here's how he does it.
Step
1: Research the field/industry.
Before a
designer like Tyler even thinks about putting pen to paper, he has to do
his research. "Researching the field or industry helps
designers get a sense of the environment the logo's going to live
in," said Tyler. This is especially true for designers who
haven't done prior work in that field or industry. "You need to know the
trends and what's appropriate."
The appropriate
look and feel of a real estate logo, for example, is going to be different than
those of a restaurant or band logo. "You've got to see what's out
there," he says. "Which conventions are worth keeping? From there,
you can start thinking about how to differentiate the new logo will from
the tons of pre-existing ones."
How different the
new logo will be from the others depends on the context. In some cases, the
logo shouldn't be radically different because you don't want to put people off.
For example, in the health services industry, customers are looking for a
certain level of comfort and familiarity; but in the concert industry, you
might want to go with something more innovative and crazy. It varies wildly
from field to field.
Step 2: Get to know
the client.
Once the designer
has a solid, objective understanding of the field or industry, it's
time to get the best possible understand of what the client does and who
their target audience is.
There are two parts
of this step, says Tyler. First, there's the information you're trying to glean
from them: what they do, what they think about themselves, and who they sell
to. Then, there's the translation process. "If your client is a construction
company but they talk a lot about how they're really family-based, the
challenge is translating that ephemeral idea into something concrete. How do
you capture the essence of that company?"
When this part of
the process is done right, it involves a lot of back and forth, asking
questions, and pushing the client to articulate and deeply explain their value
proposition. For newer companies, these discussions can actually be really eye
opening. "A lot of companies aren't aware of how they're different -- especially
smaller companies. These logo design discussions can even help them think more
about what differentiates themselves from their competitors."
Step 3: Sketch,
present, and iterate on initial ideas.
"I usually try
to present the client with between two and three possibilities," says
Tyler. "Any more than that and you might find yourself doing revisions on
all of your ideas, which sets you up with a lot more work and them up with a
much higher bill."
For example, when Tyler designed the logo for Inbound Marketing Week 2015, here are the initial ideas
and explorations he presented:
Step 4: Revise.
Sometimes, this
step is only one little tweak. Other times, it's a series of longer revisions.
Tyler says he usually specifies in the original contract how many
revisions he's willing to do, which forces the client to be more
thoughtful about each revision request. "Sometimes, clients ask you
to start over from scratch," he says. "You can avoid this by doing
your due diligence when creating the original contract."
Here is the final
revision for Inbound Marketing Week's logo, along with secondary versions used
on the website, lanyards, signs, and other various paraphernalia.
Step 5: Organize
the final deliverable.
Once the logo's
finished, Tyler will sort out with his client which file formats and other
iterations they need that the logo might live on. For example, Icon needed
their logo to fit on the bottom of a snowskate. A restaurant might need menus,
signage, and t-shirts designed.
Designing a logo
from scratch is a difficult creative process that takes a lot of research,
knowledge of a business and its audience, and a deep consideration for the
principles of logo design. But if you partner with the right designers and have
a solid process in place, you should end up with something your company loves
(and people can understand).
this post is from: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/creating-logos-design-process
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