12th April 2020
The logo designing process, in brevity, is a nasty piece of work, and being a professional who goes through it daily is no easy chore!
Constant deadlines to meet, imaginative designs to conceive, and perfect execution is by no means a walk in the park.
Notwithstanding, the professionals get to work as a part of their daily lives and use their remarkable skills to come up with images that are memorable, instantly recognizable, and unique.
If you are an established business in desperate need of a much-needed facelift, or are an individual on the verge of becoming a professional designer, well, fret not,because in this blog, you will be walkedstep by step through the never-ending process of designing a logo.
Without any further ado, let’s begin!
The brief entails all the details regarding the time incurred in the process, price, and deadline.
Prior to the carrying on with the project, the client provides a brief to the designer about the company’s background via emailor a personal sitting to give a rough idea and the direction.
The client then sits together with the designer and thoroughly discusses the organization’s distinctive factors, their marketing goals, visions, and target audience. The more the designers know about the client, the smarter and accurate solutions they will be able to come up with.
The gamut of the brief stretches from gathering all the intricate details of the organization to getting the right color palette according to the type of industry the business operates in.
A professional will ensure understanding and extracting all the necessary information to execute the order as per the client’s requisition. The majority of the professional logo designing companies aim to deliver the deliverables within 48-72 hours,so naturally, the process goes on for 30-45 minutes.
After the acceptance of the proposal by the client, next comes the research and discovery phase.
Research allows the designers to get a sense of the market the design is going to live in. For this reason, it is utmost important that the designer himself is accustomed to the trends that dominate the industry to cut-short in this stage of the process.
Most designers usually break this stage into three essential parts:
CLIENT RESEARCH
A professional logo designer researches the client’s business and tries to discover where it currently stands in regards to market share, brand position, sales, etc. They also conduct an extensive research on the clients’ competitors and how they are better than the clients or vice versa.
While doing that, they may find some facets of the organization that haven’t been mentioned in the initial discussions, but the aim of client discovery is to thoroughly understand their current position and requirements in order to provide the best possible solution.
INDUSTRY RESEARCH
Getting to know the particular niche your client operates in is significant. professionals, therefore conduct extensive research on the clients’ competitors to understand what works in the market and what doesn’t.
Based on the modus operandi of the designer, the process can include assessing the strengths of the industry leader, weaknesses that failed enterprises consist of and other threats and opportunities that can impact the way the final design comes out.
Once considerable industry and competitor knowledge is garnered, professionals look to their imagination for inspiration (mostly).
A number of professionals also rely on plethora of inspirational designs available on the internet. Nevertheless, once they`ve got what they require, drastic changes are made to ascertain that the idea appears original.
Be it a doodle on a handkerchief or well-crafted sketch on Adobe Illustrator – most custom logo designers DRAW to get ideas into place.
The human brain reacts better to visuals as compared to written content, which explains the wide usage of mood boards at this stage.
They use image references usually provided by clients to explain to them the vibe they want to convey with the final pieces.
After that, the brainstorming is transferred to grid paper or dotted paper to redraw and rescale the final design. The imagery is further refined with a pen for further processing.
As the name of this stage describes the formation of a concept, the designers discuss the design with the client before taking it on the software.
After the client’s go, the design is converted to digital format using a designing software. Be it Adobe Illustrator, Affinity Designer, CorelDRAW etc.
Digital versions are relatively convenient as they allow quick modifications and adjustments.
Before applying the colors to the image, it is tested in extremes of color, i.e., white and black, to ensure they nail the design in any format and any output.
After this, designers go through an extensive library of logotypes to choose the most suited typeface that perfectly depicts the brand identity and its values without causing any confusion amongst the target audience.
Imagine Fisher Price’s typography as being straight and corporate, will it bring the same impact on its audience like the actual logo? Obviously not!
The reason being it’s a kids’ toy company. The vibrant design, along with the funky typography, goes perfectly with the brand identity.
At this stage, the designer chooses the best concept based on the colors, adaptability,mockups and collates it into a client-presentation document.
How an individual perceives color varies from person to person, and a minor shift of hue can make a world of difference. For this reason, several different options of color schema are generally presented to the client based on the order-detail.
Digital mockup gives an idea about the visual appearance of the logo on different mediums, for example,crockery, shirts, plastic, business cards, billboards, TV, etc. It entirely depends on the type of industry the client operates in.
The designer exports the design into a secure PDF Format, enabling the client to view it over screen.
It is always recommended to print the design because colors do vary in RGB (digital) and CMYK (print) format. Professional designers therefore, vigilantly choose the colors ensuring minimum deviation between both mediums.
REVISIONS/APPROVAL
After the presentation, the client andthe designer analyze the advantages and disadvantages of every solution and pick the one that best meets the needs.
Since clients have extensive information about their field, they understand how nitty-gritty details can impact their brand’s perception in the eyes of customers.
Sometimes this step is all about amending a little tweak. While, other times, it involves a long list of amendments. It all depends on the client.
Usually, the professionals mention in the contract the number of times they will make revisions, so the client is forced to be more thoughtful when making a revision request – sparing professionals out repeating a task over and over again.
DELIVERY
After going through all the steps of the logo designing process, the professionals start working on the deliverables.
The deliverables include file-formats, including AI files, PNGs, and JPEGs. The client may demand other iterations to showcase the design on different mediums that include signages, cups, t-shirt designs, etc.
Trademarking the design is another vital aspect of the process to protect the business` identity in the industry and prevent it from getting imitated.
The three white lines under the very famous Adidas logo, represents that the shoes are authentic and originally designed by the Adidas Company.
Even such minute details are adhered to when the professionals are at work!
Conclusion
In a nutshell, the logo designing process involves thoroughly understandingclient’s needs through questions and extensive research, creating and developing ideas through rough sketches, presenting and discussing the best design from the client, getting it approved and making amendments if needed and delivering the final deliverables as discussed with the client.
Looking for a professional to do the same for your business? Check out our offerings, you`ll be surprised with what we have in store for you!
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