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A systematic approach to logo design

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by Adham Dannaway on October 30, 2011 in Branding, Tutorials with 12 Comments Tags:branding made easy, logo design, logo design tutorial, simple logo design, step by step logo design Designing a logo can be a very time consuming process as it is often quite difficult to come up with logo design ideas that match our clients requirements. There are so many different elements you need to consider when designing a logo including colours, typography, balance and symbolism to name a few. So where do you start? Today Ill show you a systematic approach for designing any logo which will hopefully add some logic and structure to the very creative and sometimes haphazard logo design process. So you have just finished talking to your client about the new brand they want you to create. As an example lets say that your client is a stock broking firm called Petra Capital and they are looking for a clean and corporate logo design which will give their firm a professional look and feel. Well get started on designing their new logo using this systematic approach.

Do some research
First things first, we need to do some background research. Do a Google search to find your clients competitors and have a look at their branding to get a feel for the style of logos used. Its fine to be inspired by competitors but we want to make sure that our clients logo design is unique so that it stands out from the others in some way. Its also important to do some background research on your clients business. I actually found out that Petra Capital specialize in mining stocks and that the word Petra means rock in Greek. These are interesting facts that we can incorporate into the logo design.

Generate some ideas

Once weve done some research and have a pretty good feel for whats needed we can create whats called a morphological matrix to help us brainstorm ideas. This is my secret weapon when it comes to logo design, its a very powerful way to organize your thoughts and merge them together to create clever concepts. Mind maps are also useful to get your creative juices flowing. A morphological matrix is basically a table with the logo design components in the left hand column and your ideas on the right. Try to come up with as many ideas, symbols and concepts as possible. Below you can see the morphological matrix I created for our example client. Ive circled the key ideas that Id like to incorporate into the design. Since the client is a stockbroking firm specializing in mining, Ive decided to merge the mountains symbolism with a line graph that represents stock trends. Remember, the whole point of logo design is recognition, we need to create a unique symbol that people will remember.

Decide on the type of logo

Now that weve got some ideas in mind its time to figure out what type of logo is most appropriate for our client. There are three basic types of logos: Illustrative, Iconic and Textual. Illustrative Logo Illustrative logos are generally quite complex and graphically heavy and thus are usually not suitable for corporate logos. Due to their graphical complexity we need to also make sure that they scale down nicely. Here are some examples of illustrative logo designs.

Iconic Logo Iconic logos consist of a symbol placed next to the logo text. These types of logos are quite powerful as they have a focus on strong typography while also giving the logo a unique look and feel with the use of symbols. Iconic logos are also quite versatile as you can use the symbol on its own in certain cases too.

Textual Logo Textual logos are the most traditional and simple types of logos consisting of typography only. These logos rely heavily on typographic style and are usually quite strong and bold. These logos are often used in more conservative and corporate industries such as finance and law.

Initial black and white sketches

Lets go with an iconic logo for our example client as it will allow us to use the symbol concept we thought of using our matrix earlier on. Now were ready to start sketching our logo in black and white. Its important for a logo design to work well in black and white, at both a large and small size, to ensure that

its versatile enough to be stamped onto a myriad of promotional media . Your logo design shouldnt rely on fancy special effects, shines and gradients to make it look good, I usually steer clear of any effects and simply keep my logos flat colour. You can sketch out your concepts on paper or on the computer, whichever works for you. Dont over complicate your concept and steer clear of design trends to ensure your logo stands the test of time. Try to also keep balance in mind to ensure that the logo is weighted equally on both sides. Heres my concept sketch for our logo symbol. We dont need to worry too much about the details as we can polish it up later on.

Typography
The typeface you choose for your logo design is one of the most important elements of the design as it could make or break your logo. Every typeface has a personality and we need to make sure that it reflects that of the business. Try not to use too many fonts in your logo design as this could create an overly complex and unbalanced look and feel, one or two fonts is ideal. If you want to ensure that your typeface is unique you can create your own or simply start with an existing one and change it to suit your needs. Search Free Fonts is a great resource to find the fonts youre looking for.

Define the colour scheme

Colour is a very important element of logo design as it very quickly conveys meaning and emotion. Our minds have strong subliminal responses to colour so we need to make sure that we use colour psychology appropriately in our logo design. When deciding on our colour scheme we should always consider the meaning of the colours we choose. Luckily there are online tools such as Colour Lovers and Adobe Kuler that can help us come up with colour schemes quickly and easily. Here is the colour scheme I came up with for our example stock broking client: black (serious, bold, classic), blue (secure, success, power) and green(money, fresh, crisp).

Put it all together

Weve planned out all of our logo elements, now its time for the easy part, creating it. There are a few basic logo design principles to keep in mind when creating your logo. Make sure that you create your logo as a vector file using software such as Adobe Illustrator. Vector images can be scaled to any size without losing quality. You should also use CMYK colour mode, this can be set when you create your new file in Illustrator. Once youve finished creating your logo its also a good idea to outline fonts to ensure that your file is not font-dependent. Finally check the balance of your design by flipping the logo upside down, it should still look balanced upside down. Once youre happy with your design simply save it and youre done. Now its time to show the client, fingers crossed they like it!

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12 Comments
Here's what everyone else has to say. Leave a comment 1. ArielSantos (@arielsantos95) says: October 30, 2011 at 10:43 pm Reply Im from Brazil and I loved this post. Ill keep it always in my memory because its a beautiful concept to develop a logo. Congratulations, Im looking forward to the next post.

Nephi says: November 25, 2011 at 7:54 am At last, somonee comes up with the right answer! 2. Scott Sherwood says: October 30, 2011 at 11:34 pm Reply This is a really nice simple break down of the logo design process. I love morphological matrices, theyre such a simple concept but they really do help the design process.

3. Emilie Eggleston says: October 31, 2011 at 2:10 am Reply Straightforward. Thank you for breaking it down. 4. Razvan Girmacea says: October 31, 2011 at 2:03 pm Reply The step by step process is great. I usually make it all in my head (instead of writing it and splitting into steps) and does not give the best results: it gives something that works, but not perfect. 5. Nicola turner says: November 25, 2011 at 10:10 am Reply This is such a great way of designing a logo I dont think I will forget these steps thank you. Will wait for the next post. 6. Taha says: December 14, 2011 at 11:40 am Reply Thanks. This is very helpful and brilliant post. I always get stuck in logo designing and this article gives me lots of ideas and confidence in making it. 7. Adham Dannaway says: (Author) February 5, 2012 at 11:04 am Reply Thanks guys, its tough to try and give a concrete structure to something as creative and free-form as a logo design but this process helped me out over the years.

MohammadwDado says: March 12, 2012 at 3:33 pm Good artcle! Id draigsee with this quote however; Since the internet has took off I would say that the number of designers targeting logo design has increased ten-fold, which in turn has made it ten times more harder to get work through online sources...but the Internet has increased onethousand-fold so ultimately, the amount of work a logo designer can potentially reap is dependant upon supply and demand RATIO. Demand is as high as ever! 8. Vanessa Ooms says: March 11, 2012 at 11:50 pm Reply

Thank you so much for this post! I am still a pretty green designer and was needing more structure to my creative process. I will give the morphological matrix a try for the branding project I have coming up 9. Beth says: March 15, 2012 at 7:45 pm Reply Well-organized and well-written. Nice job.

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