The most important phase of logo design is the beginning where we will discuss in detail your business, industry, competitors, customers and goals for your new identity. With this feedback I spend time conducting additional online research looking at your what competitors in your industry are doing. I also gather inspiration from a variety of sources to arm myself with additional visual ideas. The next steps are where it all starts coming together – I create initial conceptual sketches, refine them until they are solid and render the best options in a vector format. Then I present them to you to get your feedback and we refine it until you have an awesome new logo to represent your business.
Steps:
✚ Design Brief
An initial meeting to discuss your business and get clear vision for the logo, type, colors, icons, tag lines and any other branding elements. This step includes completing the Outreach Media Branding Questionnaire.
✚ Industry Research
Conduct research into your industry: competitors, history, current styles, trends.
✚ Visual Research
Collect examples of successful logos and other brand elements.
✚ Conceptualizing and Sketching
Sketch multiple icon and letter form concepts.
✚ Refining
Choose the best concepts and refine the sketches.
✚ Rendering
Illustrate the best ideas in a vector illustration program (Adobe Illustrator). Includes choosing fonts that are appropriate for the logotype. First concepts are in black only and tested at small sizes for basic applications.
✚ Review
Presentation and review logo concept. It is best to meet in person to discuss which ideas work best and discuss improvements.
✚ Refining
Refine concepts based on feedback then add color options.
✚ Approval
If the decision maker is satisfied then we will proceed to the next step, or continue with a third refinement step.
✚ Brand Standards Guide
Create a basic reference document specifying source font/s, colors, size and position.
✚ Delivery
Create separate files with black, white, grayscale and color options. Color options will be based on Pantone Matching System for reference. Save and deliver various file formats.
✚ Celebrate!
