That’s one of the tough questions those of us in the design business will face at some point in our career. As the first in our Design Process series, we’ll illustrate how logos are made here at Toolbox Creative.
1) Discovery and design brief:
When a designer and a client love each other very much…
Once we’re all sure we want to make a beautiful logo together, we meet with your team to understand your business goals, target audience, hopes and dreams. We glean lots of information from you, discuss how the logo will be used and whether it needs to live within an existing brand identity or start its own.
2) Research and sketches:
Determined doodling.
The Toolbox Creative team conducts cursory market research on your company, industry and competition — looking for what makes your target audience tick. This research guides us as pencil hits paper and concepts get sketched on notebook paper, cocktail napkins and time sheets.
3) Proposed designs:
Here’s the delivery…
Think of it like a pitch meeting on Mad Men, but with more options and (a bit) less alcohol. We’ve pared down our copious concepts and present you with 5–10 tight sketches. Sometimes a clear winner arises, sometimes it happens during the next step. Regardless, we encourage clients to take the logo concepts and live with them for a few days, see what speaks to them and gather feedback, bearing in mind that logo design is not a democratic process.
4) Visual identity:
A logo is born
We go through rounds of tighter and tighter comps, refining line, shape and typography to arrive at a final black and white logo. We then blend research, science and intuition to develop color options — ultimately arriving at a final color logo you’ll be proud to call your own.
5) The logo usage guide:
You and your logo
The business world is tough, and a logo needs proper care and handling to make it out there. We’ll deliver your logo safely bundled in all the necessary file formats along with a logo usage guide detailing proper usage for all possible applications.
Your logo is often the most important and recognizable part of your brand identity, (though a brand identity is much more than a logo). We’re honored to help establish the look and feel of your business. We take the job seriously, have a ton of fun doing it and beam with pride when we see logos we’ve designed kicking ass in the marketplace.
Give us a jingle or email if you’d like to have The Talk about logos.
See also: Will Toolbox pay for my logo tattoo?
