Well, its been a while since the last post but I managed to do some ‘time-management’ thing. I thought of writing the process upon how do I design logos for companies / clients / NGOs / organisations etc.

Remember, the first impression is the last impression. To ensure that companies outbid others, it is a must to be unique and to be unique, you need to something to show that your company is unique — your ‘Logo’ or emblem.

The logo is part of the Corporate Identity kit which includes many other stationaries like the letterhead, envelope, visiting cards and so on. But, I will concentrate of the Logo part today.

I will take the MSCC: Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community logo as the subject.

Step 1: Client discovery

Understanding what the company want to have as their logo, aiming to learn as much as possible about the company culture and the way they do business, and then inject that message into the logo design. This is normally possible after extensive and quality discussions with the team.

Step 2: Industry discovery

After the client discovery part where you get to know much about the company, you need to know:

  • the audience the logo is targeting
  • the organisation in parallel with this company who is in direct competition with

This is a crucial part since you’re going to start conceptualising with what concepts you’ll be coming with. This part includes some research on your part.

Step 3: Logo application

This is the last part before shifting to the sketching part, the logo application phase. In this phase, you only have to answer a question, Where will this logo be used or appear most of the time?

It’s an important phase since the designer will enumerate what can and cannot be done from the designer’s point of view.

Step 4: Conceptualisation

Get your crayons! We are going to draw!

Well, we’re going to draft professionally all the concepts what comes into your mind with respect to the clients requirements. on paper. Its likely to be a brainstorming process. It’s fun, trust me. Usually, I roughly end up with 6-8 concepts.




Step 5: Draft design

After the sketching phase, create the designs on illustrator or Photoshop or any other software your prefer. This is where you give life to your concepts, colours, rounded corners and so on.

You can aswell create them in black & white which will allow you to swap the colours if the clients orders you to do an amendment.

Your main objective is to get client feedback on your rough ideas and identify the ones they’d like to refine after choosing from the different logos.






Step 6: Refinement phase

This is a bit hectic and annoying phase as it involves a lot of back and forth regarding the improvements and changes for the presented logo drafts.

Sometimes, the client tells you to refine only one logo but it is a good practice to work out 2-3 logos in parallel just to see where they go.

Step 7: You’re done!

Once your client is satisfed with the work, mock up everything just to make it look more professional and dynamic!

Benefits?

Firstly, you save lots of time and it’s good to conform with this ‘protocol’. Secondly, to deal with corporate people, this is the right way to deal with. It is a serious business involving distinct phases, all with an aim to create a unique, memorable symbol that adds value to the company and makes it stand out in the market.

If you have anything related to logo design, feel free to ask me 🙂

You can also vote for the best logo here.