Our 4-Step Logo Design (or Redesign) Process
Whether you’re a shiny new start-up, or a company that’s been trading for decades, your business deserves a high-quality logo.
And perhaps more importantly, your customers - the people buying your products and services every day - expect you to have one.
Our Blog post about Branding explained that a brand is much more than just a logo, but without doubt, logos often act as the visual foundation for any company’s branding and design strategies.
If that visual foundation is at all weak or wobbly, it’s much harder to build a successful brand on top of it. So make sure yours is strong. And by strong, we mean well thought-out and well-implemented, by a professional graphic designer or a creative agency like us.
We’ve outlined OUR 4-STEP PROCESS here:
1. TALK
We learn all about you, your business or organisation, your ’story’, your future plans, and how we can help.
We love hearing about our clients’ objectives (the wider, business ones and the specific project ones), and it’s this vital stage of talking that feeds into every design brief.
Occasionally, clients approach us with a very clear idea about what they need their new logo to achieve and how they want it to look, so all we need to do is work with them to develop and implement their concept.
Usually though, clients admit that while they’re great at running their businesses, they’re either not creatively minded or talented, or that they lack the time and/or inclination to do it themselves, so they’re happy handing over the creative reins to us.
2. PLAN
We do our ‘homework’ and come back with a plan (recommendations and proposed project costs).
After we’ve spoken to you, we’ll discuss the project internally and carry out more background research into your business sector and any competitors, as well as reviewing your current visual presentation.
At this point, we’ll send you our project proposal outlining the requirements, the work involved, the associated costs and timings, and any immediate recommendations.
3. DESIGN
We use our creative expertise to produce and present designs that you’ll love and want to show the world.
Assuming you approve the brief produced at Stage 1, and the project proposal and costs we send you at Stage 2, we’re ready to start work on the exciting design stages.
And I say stages plural, because our project costs always include two rounds of minor changes after our initial concepts presentation. Sometimes those rounds aren’t needed and other times, they’re used to ‘fine-tune’ your preferred idea, but by building them at the start, we’re also building in flexibility and ‘breathing space’ into the design process.
When we start working on your logo ideas, we’ll look back at our research into your business sector/industry and your competitors. This is never about copying what other people are doing - quite the opposite. It’s about defining your distinctive brand ‘personality’ and using our logo concepts to establishing your unique brand style.
We’ll explore different options for typography and graphics, often sketching out our early logo ideas in black and white on an ‘old-school’ layout pad, before reviewing them and working up our favourites on-screen and digitally. This lets us introduce colour, which can be one of our most powerful ‘tools’ in designing a logo and building a brand.
We’ll then review the concepts again internally until the point we’re ready and raring to present them to you - ideally in person, but if that’s not possible, we’ll email you a PDF file with explanatory notes for each concept (usually 3-5 ideas, depending on the brief), before arranging a follow-up phone call whenever it’s convenient.
Please think of these ideas as ‘digital sketches’, where nothing is set in stone.
We want your feedback to be completely honest and when you feel comfortable about suggesting changes to your preferred logo, and/or combining elements you like from one concept, with other elements from another, the results usually turn out far better.
We’ll review your feedback and present any preferred logo concepts as developed ideas.
The logo is often finalised at this design stage, but if further small changes are needed, we’ll action those before creating and supplying your newly-approved ‘master’ logo.
While it doesn’t always feel quite as exciting as the early design stages, supplying your ‘master’ logo in all its versions (stacked and/or ranged, and full colour and/or mono) and in all the right file formats for future use, is just as important.
We always supply CMYK .ai and .eps files for print and signage etc, an RGB .jpg file for screen and office use, and a transparent background .png file for online use. These formats should cover any future creative needs, but if you or any of your partners or suppliers ever need anything else, we’re always here to help.
In light of the time and money businesses invest in developing their new logo, it’s surprising how often the files go missing, so we recommend keeping them in a safe place, and for added peace of mind, we’ll keep a backed-up copy on our server as well.
For an extra level of brand protection, you might also commission us to produce a brand guidelines document outlining how logo usage and the colours and typefaces used to create it. Please see our previous Blog post all about brand guidelines here.
4. REVIEW
We keep taking to you, and working with you to keep you looking your best.
If our relationship’s a long and successful one (and we hope it will be :), the design process is an ongoing one, with regular catch-ups and checks to make sure your logo and branding are looking and working the way you want them to. And if we spot something that’s not quite right - a slight colour inconsistency here, or a slight positioning error there, we’ll help you fix it so that your logo - your company’s most valuable visual asset - keeps saying all the right things about your business and stays protected for the future.
So, if you’re thinking about a logo design (or redesign) for your business, let’s talk!