There are many things that must be considered when creating a logo. Whether it is for yourself, or a client, there are key steps that you need to take in order to get the most out of your design.
The purpose of a logo is to represent the company that it stands for. In many respects, the logo becomes the ‘face’ of that company, and thus it must tell you all about that company, and give off the right impression, without actually explaining anything at all.
The best logos are simple, memorable, smart, and timeless. I especially like logos with hidden images or messages. They always add another element of interest once you have discovered them and provide a talking point among prospective customers.
Below are my 6 tips on how to create the perfect logo:
Step 1: Talk to the client
You need to find out about the company that you are designing for. Their motives, their aspirations, their operations, goals, competition, target audience, and overall, what type of image they would like to portray.
On top of this you need to know about their existing brand, their brand colours (if they have any), their strap-line and if they have any specific fonts that they use. Once you have collected all of this information you can start drawing!
Step 2: Sketching your ideas
The vast majority of the best logo designers out there start off with a trusty pencil and paper. In my opinion nothing can beat drawing out your ideas first. It’s much less restricting that beginning work on your computer and it’s much quicker too! It allows you to get all of your thoughts down, whether good or bad, and no matter where you are, if you suddenly get a flash of inspiration there’s no stopping you. Sometimes I’ll even draw a couple of scribbles while I’m with the client if ideas pop into my head!
Here are some of the sketches from one of the latest logos that I’ve worked on. It’s for a company called Muddy Faces and I’ll be using this as an example for the rest of this article so that you’ve got something to relate to…
Based on all of the information that I had gathered from the client, I managed to come up with several pages of very rough sketches in only an hour or two. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes, or draw something that might not be very good - at least half of my sketches were terrible! You can’t fail at this, and if you really are that self conscious, just hide your sketchbook so no one will ever see!
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