One of the very first projects I had at SCAD was designing a personal brand. Colors, typography, layout, and a logo. Introduced to logo design early on helped me realize that graphic design isn’t making a pretty picture or even throwing everything into a single design. Graphics is a career of finesse and saying as much as possible with very little.
In comes the logo. We see iconic logos everyday but don’t realize the amount of thought and precision that goes into them. Whether you need to craft a logo for your personal business or are simply curious about the design process, this brief post walks through all the considerations that go into designing a logo. One thing I would like to say is that everything here applies to posters, web design, book covers, and whatever else. Simple is always better.
What’s the overall message?
Before a curve or box is drawn, a designer needs to determine the overall purpose of the business or person they are designing for. Some businesses require an iconic mark like McDonald’s or Nike. Others need a strong usage of typography like hospitals and banks. These considerations are made when looking at the company or person and deciding what the overall message is. A logo is a first impression, so it needs to share the end user’s characteristics and values.
I actually of a fairly recent example of how a logo can hurt a business. Driving with a friend to do graduation pictures (finally), we passed a store front that had a cute blue terrier dog logo and “Terrier” in thin white letters. My friend made a comment about how weird it was for a shop to sell only terriers. I had a similar thought until I saw the door. Plastered on the glass was “Terrier Properties.” It’s a real estate company with a dog logo.
When creating a mark, you need to think about initial impressions. As cute as a little puppy is, said company might be mistaken for a pet shop or doggy daycare. Whatever mark you create needs to properly represent yourself, the company, or whoever else it’ll end up with.
Logo Creation: Shape, Color, Type
I’ve done a couple posts on typography and how different fonts mean different things. I’m also going to go more in-depth into basic color theory, or at least my simplified solution. By shape, I just mean whatever sketch you digitize into a usable mark. For this section, I actually want to go through my LONG process of designing my brand.
If you’re new, I’ll just say it now. I change my branding every year because for four years, I continually learned more about myself and design. And every mark just wasn’t right.
The first one shown is simplified from what I originally wanted (there were way more sparks). It was my first time with Illustrator and I decided to include every feature possible. Believe me, if the image was any bigger, it still wouldn’t make sense. After realizing my heart-stabbing quill was too much, I took inspiration from music artists like NF and Tauren Wells and tried showing SRS Inkfeather as a letter combo. This requires good typography skills and choices, but both fell flat as my knowledge was still limited and I insisted on a gradient.
The last three aren’t bad, but they each have a different story that they tell. For practice, scribble your thoughts about what each of the last three make you think of before reading on. What’s your first impression?
Done writing?
Excellent. Comment below what your first impressions were (I’m actually kind of curious). Here’s what I wanted my first impression to be for each mark:
The pink SRS with a feather was meant to be symmetrical and more organized. At this phase in my life, I was fed up with all the crazy marks and feeling like I was failing at design. I leaned heavily on simplicity, and since books don’t have a ton of funky designs, I decided to promote myself as structured and methodical. Obviously it’s pink because… well, I love pink.
The red and orange logotype came during my time at Hexbug, a robotics toy company. My supervisor suggested I design my resume more to showcase my skills. To put it bluntly, it was bland. After watching some extra workshops on branding, I realized the message I wanted to share was my love for all things sci-fi, medieval, and nature. Autumn palettes are very attractive to me (even though we don’t have autumn in Florida). So, I veered away from my comfort zone of pink and created a leaf with circuit marks to be my favorite letter: S. The rest of the type is a medieval blackletter I had discovered to describe my fascination with fantasy.
Then comes portfolio class. The teacher says to simplify everything because any mark you create will be scrutinized with a very fine tooth comb. I’d been jumping back and forth between a lot of fonts, trying to find something that would make me standout but also relate to both my professions. I settled on a serif type and then used an old English letterform as a display mark to show my liking of traditional life (less tech, more nature). The biggest change was with color; I gained an obsession for purple and used its complementary color, yellow, to create strong contrasts that make the entire system pop in an intriguing way. And that’s what I have now.
What’s the point?
Point is, your first idea won’t be the right one. Two years from now, that mark you thought was awesome will look bland. And sometimes, you need to jump back to a previous mark. Companies that have been around for decades are changing they’re logos, and have been changing them before now. Just check out Taco Bell.
My basic formula would be this: no more than two colors that have good contrast, one basic mark made from simple shapes, and well-designed typography that has even, thick strokes. There is obviously wiggle room, this just how I think about logo design. The more simplistic your design, the easier it is to read and understand. Creating a simple mark with a lot of personality is possible, it just takes many iterations. Don’t be afraid to grab a pencil and fill a notebook with random doodles.
Size test
Every logo, no matter how it’s designed, needs to fulfill the size test. Think of the laughing emoji; it makes sense on your phone and a throw pillow. Two very different sizes, one being your fingertip and the other a dinnerplate. Yet in both mediums, it reads as a laughing expression.
Logos, similarly, need to work on various mediums of varying sizes. A logo as a profile image views differently than a logo on a letterhead or a website or a poster. Whatever mark is created needs to make sense and read well no matter how small or big it gets.
When I learned about logo design, the gauge was an inch to .25″. I’d test it printed and on a computer because color displays differently on paper than on a computer. Going smaller or big is sort of extraneous; not every good logo will be legible at micro sizes. The size test can also help with deciding if some lines or elements are necessary or not. Everything included should be absolutely necessary for understanding the logo.
Final Thoughts on Logo Design
That turned out a little longer than I thought. ‘:D
Designing a logo, as can be seen from my years of searching, is a game of trial and error. You’ll settle on one, and then find a couple weeks later that it doesn’t quite fit. When you craft your own brand, you have more luxury to keep adapting. For a company that wants a mark yesterday, I say scribble a lot. The first 50% of your process should be focused on the characteristics and message you want to share. After that, it’s all sketching and playing with options. Completing the final logo is maybe 5% of the process.
Focus on the message, doodle different options that share the message, mess with a few colors, test it, pick one (or have the client pick if it’s for someone else), and then finalize. Simplicity over complexity. Trust me on that; I’ve done both.
