7 Steps to Designing a Professional Logo

1.  Discovery

Everyone has that vision in their mind about having that perfect logo, and sometimes they know what they want that logo to look like, or parts of it.  But most people don’t have any idea what they want, just that it has to be incredibly polished and professional.  Whatever your needs are, this is the first step in completing a logo design.

 

Your designer should be asking imperative questions to spark conversation and dig into the mind to find that vision.  Tell me about yourself, your company, what do you do or sell, how long have you been in business, who are the intended audiences, etc.   This will allow the designer to get a firm understanding of what the requirements are which will lead them into the next step.

 

2.  Research

Logically this is what should be happening next and can take the most amount of time.  When asked ‘why can a logo design take so long to be completed?’  This is because we have to learn about everything; our customer, their business, products, services, visions, accomplishments, mission statement, history of the industry and so on.

 

We can accomplish this through any kind of avenue’s through internet researching, books, radio, friends in a related industry and even bouncing ideas off our parents!  That’s right.  Its’ likely that they know more about a lot of things than you do.

 

3.  Sketch

With the advances in technology this term could be a computer-aided design (CAD) or some designers still break out the ol’ pencil and paper and doodle some images in black and white.  It may be easier, quicker and more consistent to move some objects around on the monitor than it would be to re-draw them each time you get an epiphany but that doesn’t mean the traditional ways are dead.

 

Either way, whatever the designer does behind the scenes shouldn’t be that important to you as a customer.  You probably never see this stage so it is a moot point, but it is always good to know what’s happening with your logo.  Sketching is important to the designer.  This is where those “creative juices” start to flow.  Whatever sparks that creative fire and vision to come up with that compelling sketch is really all that matters.

 

4.  Design

Once that alarm goes off from the eye to the brain and the idea’s are jumping off the paper (or out of the monitor) it’s time to design it into a draft form that we can send to the customer.  It’s likely that this process has to happen on 2-3 occasions to give the client a couple of different variations to review.  This keeps the customer engaged and also shows them different directions they could go in.  It also creates an opportunity for the customer to combine different parts of each of the logo’s.

 

5.  Propose

We bring the client back into the process at this point and unveil our creations.  Usually in black and white.  It’s common to have some dialogue attached or connected to the Proposal to explain or allow for an understanding of what and why things were created to look like this.  Sometimes a logo can require no explanation but generally we elaborate on the decisions we made coming up with the icons.

 

6.  Refine

Here we wait and hold our breath as the customer provides their feedback to us.  What did they like or hate, questions they have, what else they want to see, colours they might want to use or update.  If you have done your research and discovery correctly and thoroughly there should be no need to re-invent the wheel here, it should simply be a review of what logo they like best, adding some colour and changes to the selected design.

 

After this review we revert back to step (5) and create a new proposal.

 

7.  Execute

After the customer approves the final changes we deliver the final product electronically in any formats required.  All source files, fonts or layers that the customer asks for they get.  After all, they did pay for it and now they should own it.