Monday 19 April 2010

How to Design a Logo for Your Customer - A Logo Design Tutorial for Freelance Designers

STEP BY STEP LOGO DESIGN TUTORIAL

Logo design is the most creative of all graphic designs processes. Besides the computer skills needed, it is the designer’s creative thought process which plays the most important role in creating high impact and eye catching logos. This tutorial will guide you through the steps to create an attractive and professional logo. Once you get some ideas for the logo, then you can use your imagination to take you where no designer has ever gone before.

I start every project by asking the client to give me details about what their company does and who their audience is. I then take this information and create a few rough sketch ideas to show the client. I have found that getting feedback on basic concepts is the best for everyone involved. It allows me to weed out the ideas that might look good to me but don’t work for the client’s company. Remember that the customer knows his business inside and out, as well as who his core audience is and what they like. Therefor, your client will know which logo is the best for his organization. Try not to take offense if a client doesn’t like your ideas. If this is the case, ask for feedback and suggestions in order to move in a new direction. You might want to ask your customer about which logos he or she admires so that you can see what your customer tends to like.

Development of design concepts can be seen on http://www.logodesignnewzealand.co.nz

For this tutorial, I will take you through the design process that I took for a logo that I designed for an IT company. The client wanted us to design a logo for his new company. The client’s new company was for a software sales and technical contractors company. The name of the company was THINK CMB. The client told us 2 things that were very important to the success of the logo. First, he wanted to make sure that we gave the logo a blue background. Secondly, he wanted to logo to convey the thought process of a human. Read the tutorial below to see how we completed this logo design successfully.

Step 1

First, We created a rough amalgamation of ideas highlighting the main thoughts that we had for this logo theme. We thought of 3 concepts.

  1. Bulb - related to ideas, brightness , brainstorm, enlightenment
  2. Thoughts - abstract ideas for thinking
  3. Brain - Human aspect for thoughts and ideas

Step 2

Next, we had to choose the most suitable concept for the logo design.We discarded the light bulb concept, as we felt that it was too inanimate for this project. After all, the client wanted a human touch to this logo. Therefor, we tried to develop the brain concept even further. The idea of a human brain with a thought process seemed to hold rich possibilities for further development. The Human brain and its thought process is the center of every human action and achievement. So then we have connected these two ideas together.

Step 3

Now we transform the human clip art into a more abstract form of a human profile. An abstract form mean a few simple strokes that can convey an idea in an effective way. We create an appealing human profile with a modern touch.

Step 4

We had to fuse the idea of the inner workings of a brain’s thought process with the human profile graphic that we had created. We decided to give the inner workings of the brain concept a more abstract form as well. A symbolic representation of gears helps to enhance the logo’s design.

Step 5

The logo graphic now takes its basic shape as we assimilate the various ideas of a human face, thinking process and a brain. We decide to remove the brain image as it looks too cold and clinical. We retain the human face with inner working gears to highlight the thought process of the human mind.

Step 6

We integrate the text part of the logo in to the graphic and add a blue background. We try 2 different fonts for the text. We flip the graphic in one of the logo designs and now have two different versions of the logo to show the customer.

Step 7

Luckily, one concept is chosen by the client. He is very happy with the embedded ‘K’ of ‘Think’ extending into the human mind gears graphic.

Step 8

However, the client wants to see the final logo in different color combination so that he can make a wider choice. This is easy enough to do for him.

Step 9

The client makes his final selection and is very happy with the results. He makes us subdue the blue color of the graphic slightly.

The client was very happy with his new logo. We worked with him seeking his feedback and opinions at every stage of the logo design process. The combination of information, creativity, and feedback from the client has resulted in a great logo and a very happy customer.

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