If you’ve ever worked with us or any third-party designer to create a logo for your brand, you know firsthand it can be a very personal process. You’re trusting an outside party to design something that represents your brand, and you want to make sure your brand has a logo that encompasses the tone/feel of your business/industry. However, if you’re working with a good designer, they will know how to steer you toward discovering the goals and needs for your logo.
Whether you’re looking to work with a designer to create your business a logo or are interested in learning their process, the information below should give you a good idea for what to expect when working with a designer for a new logo.
The Discovery/Research Process
Anyone can create a nice-looking logo, but a good designer will try to understand your brand’s personality, company story, branding goals and anything else necessary to complete your new logo. Expect them to ask questions such as:
- What is it that makes your company unique?
- How are you different from others in your industry?
- What visual words describe the mission of your organization?
- Are there colors that you either like or dislike?
- When you think about the vision of your company, what colors come to mind?
Even if these questions don’t make a lot of sense to you, it will help the designer get a visual idea as to what you want to accomplish.
Once the designer has completed the discovery process, they should research your competition to get a sense of what others are doing in your space. The designer will, in no way, copy your competition; they just want to see what’s currently being done to define a unique direction for your brand.
Brainstorming/Sketching Your Logo
Many designers start their sketching on paper. Whether it’s in a sketch book, on scrap paper or even a cocktail napkin, they will brainstorm ideas anywhere it strikes them. From there, the designer will then take their sketches/concepts and build them out digitally, usually in Adobe Illustrator.
They may consult with other designers for opinion or even scan in their sketches and trace them; every designer works differently. As long as they present you with the drafted designs by their deadline, there is no right or wrong way to brainstorm logo design.
Presenting Their Work/Finalizing the Design
Once the designer has a handful of strong concepts, they will then present them to you. They will often show the initial concepts to you in grayscale, so you can focus on the actual mark, how it resizes and its final application rather than the color. Once a logo is chosen, they will introduce color palettes based on the research they uncovered during the discovery phase.
After you choose the logo concept and finalize colors, fonts, orientations (horizontal and vertical versions) and anything else necessary, they will then finalize your logo and present you with different file types.
File Types and Where to Use Them
After the designer has completed your logo, you should have received a number of file types that look both familiar and not. In a perfect world, there would be just one file type to use for any of your marketing materials. However, since money doesn’t grow on trees and brownies still have calories, there are different file types for different situations.
If have little to no design experience, it can be confusing to know exactly which file to use where. Check out our blog post for a list of common file types and when/where you should use them.
One thing to keep in mind when working with a good designer: they are just as excited as you are about designing a logo for your business. That being said, get creative with them! Designers feed off their clients’ enthusiasm and love having them as a major part of the process. Plus, if you show your apperception for them, they will try just that much harder to create a stunning logo for your brand.
If you want to learn more about logo design or branding, contact GreenMellen Media today and check out some of our favorite design work!
