Logo Design and Branding – Our Approach
I’d like to give an inside look at how our logo design process works. This is a quick run down of course, but you should be able to pull some good info. For the sake of this blog, we are going to use our client, Free City Move.
Step 1: Client Consultation
When we met with Free City Move, they said for their logo they wanted 3 things:
- Green and Blue Color Scheme
- Austin in the Background
- Something official, not cheap
From that information we can brainstorm where to begin. Our logo designs, and even website designs are typically simple and clean. That is how we like it. We believe that our clients products will speak for themselves, so there is no need in over compensating with a clutter filled logo.
Preliminary Design Drawings
Step 2: Design Concepts
The first step in concepts is brain storming ideas. We know somehow we have to have a clean and official logo with Austin as the underlying theme, and of course the company name “Free City Move”. We won’t yet trouble ourselves with the color scheme. It is very important that color isn’t the backbone of the logo. It needs to look good at it’s most basic state, in black and white. This allows the client to appreciate the design for what it is without the distraction of color, and that you have a logo that will work well on collateral like fax cover sheets.
The sketch to the left gives an example of brain storming ideas. There’s no right or wrong way to do it. As the phrase goes, throw stuff out there and see if something sticks.
Convert to Vector
We typically take three concepts from our sketches and create them using Adobe Illustrator. We use Illustrator rather than a program like Photoshop because Illustrator will create our logo using vector graphics rather than raster (pixel based) graphics. Vector graphics allow us to shrink and grow the logo depending on the collator it is going on. For instance, we can use the same logo file to create a 12′ x 12′ sign that we’d use to put a logo on a business card.
When selecting the concepts to create in Illustrator, we’ll take two that are in the guidelines of what the client wants, and one that is outside of the box. Doing so helps to promote creativity on our part, and on part of our client, who might not have thought of the idea and may enjoy some aspects of it.
Design 1 & 3 are client specified, while 2 is outside of the box
Once the three concepts are put together we’ll send a PDF over to our client for review. From there the client can select the concept they like the most, and revise to their liking.
Color Concepts
Step 3: Add Color
Once we have an approved concept we can add color. We’ll take variations of the colors suggested by our client. A handy tool for doing so is Adobe Kuler, an online app that provides user submitted color schemes and generates new schemes on the fly based on your criteria. I mention this tool because it can come in handy for lots of things, even repainting your house.
We’ll now create color variations based on the original client consultation in which they specified that they wanted a blue and green color scheme. Once completed we’ll send it over to the client and see how they like it.
Step 4: Final Revisions
Now that we have our logo approved, and our colors approved, we’ll check one more time for any revisions that might need to be done. In this case, the logo was fine, but we needed to add text to the bottom that said “Apartment Locators”. Here we go, the final Free City Move logo:
Free City Move is an apartment locating company based in Austin Texas. Their website is in final stages of development.
