From Concept to Reality: A 7-Step Process on Logo Design

Turn around and have a look… How many logos can you spot out in a fraction of a second? 5? 10? What is so special about these logos? What do they convey? 

Identification is what really matters in branding. Right? The primary role of a logo is to identify a brand, product, business, or service. It serves as a recognizable representation of a brand or a product. In fact, a logo effectively communicates “on behalf of the brand”. 

Though they look small, they possess the brand message and obviously, carry a lot of meaning. Designing the right logo for a brand comes with a whole lot of responsibility along with challenges. 

To combat such a complex challenge, brands prefer to hire a professional logo designer outside. At times, companies can also opt for freelancers to work with. 

Do you know what it looks like to create a logo from the scratch? From the initial conceptualization to the final “LOGO”, what goes into the logo design process? 

Read further to know how designers capture even the minute detail in that small logo… 

7-Step Logo Design Process 

Designing a logo requires time, effort, and obviously, creativity. Professional logo designers are the right ones to break this challenge. They perform thorough research about the client, brainstorm ideas, understand the industry, and create sketches with their clients and come up with a creative brief. While designing, most of the logo designers follow the design principles of good logo design. 

While the design process varies from designer to designer, our experts have shared the step-by-step process to design a logo:

• Get to Know Your Client First 
• Research the industry 
• Brainstorm with the initial ideas 
• Conceptualization and Sketching 
• Refinement and Presentation 
• Concept Enhancements 
• Final Deliverables

1. Get to Know Your Client First 

Although each and every project and client differ regarding scope, style, and industry, still the design process itself remains fairly the same. To make it simple, the logo design process comes down to one main step - "understanding the client’s requirements”. A complete background research and groundwork should be done to know the client well first. 

This is the initial step your Designer and Project Coordinator must start with. Get to know your client - what the client does and who their target audience is. Get to know your client in detail by raising a few branding questions such as:

• What makes your company unique from all others in your field? 
• What are the business goals, vision, and mission? 
• What are your future marketing goals? 

Remember, the more and more you know about your client, you can come up with better logo designs. Establish and refine the strategy before you proceed further. Once you have crafted the list of desired deliverables, the next step is to get to know the industry in detail.

2. Research the Industry 

Once you are done with the client, now it’s time for you to start with the research. Detailed research about that specific industry is what you need to proceed with. You must get to know further in detail about the industry, its specifications, history, competitors, and much more. 

Researching and getting to know about the industry helps designers to get a sense of the environment the logo is going to be present in. Get to know more about the client’s field in order to ensure that the logo you design suits their business and marketing goals. Because working in so many varied industries, it is important for the designer to learn about the new client. 

At the same time, have a look at the competitors – what they are doing. Also, grab scientific numbers through quantitative and qualitative research methods. Though it takes a lot of time, it provides better insight for the designer. 

Understand what might work and what might not before you start designing. It might be achieved only by experiencing the organization from the end user’s perspective. 

3. Brainstorm with the Initial Ideas 

In this phase, brainstorm and generate ideas based on the research done. The initial step is to organize all the information that you have found so far into conceivable points. Next, develop these points into visual representation as this helps you to stay focussed and proceed further with the design. 

Remember, creating a formally successful and creative logo is more important and at the same time, it has to communicate the client’s business line. So, first question yourself about how you’re going to present the logo – a unique symbol representing the client’s business or a simple, yet elegant typographic treatment of their business name. 

Before you proceed with the next step – sketching, create a mood board based on the ideas you created. This would assist you in the better creation of the logo sketch. 

If your client has already sent over some sample images, themes, and colors in word, you can easily create the mood board for the logo. So, it is better you get all these specifications well in advance before you start the conceptualization process. 

4. Conceptualization and Sketching 

When it comes to logo design, conceptualization is all about refining an idea further and further. Because this is where we exactly bring out the brand’s voice and style of its product. 

Once you have a finalized concept, start sketching the logo. Let your creativity come into play. 

Sketching logos might be time-consuming and you can either choose pencil-paper or use software to create the basic sketch. It is a matter of personal choice but still, as a designer, I believe that sketching by hand brings out the complete artistic expression. 

On the other hand, having a digital version of the sketch is advantageous as it allows you to have quick adjustments of your design and you can easily fine-tune it if needed. Once this is done, just go for the coloring part. 

i) Color 

Initially, before you add up the key colors to the logo, present the logo to your client in monotone format – black and white shades. Because several logo creators fail to present a logo that looks good in black and white shades. 

Remember, a great logo design must have the ability to look good in any format, be it in attractive colors or in a subtle yet creative monotone shade. 

ii) Font

Once you have created the rough ideas to work, move to the next step – think how you will design the company name through the logotype. 

Usually, we designers have a general idea about the style of typeface we are actually looking for. It might either be a contemporary sans-serif or some other font but finding the right font for your logo takes extensive research in the font library. If you want to give a personalized look to your brand name, you can even create your own font style as well. 

For the brand name, try to use a bold typo and for the slogan, use a sleek typo. Make sure you don’t use a font that is too stylish or hard to understand. 

Choosing the perfect font could be advantageous, as it creates a unique quality to your Brand making it stand out from the crowd. 

Bringing it All Together 

Once you have finalized the typefaces that are ideal for your Brand, we would explore each typeface – how they look side-by-side with the logomark symbol that was created earlier. 

Next is the major part of the logo design – choosing the color palettes. Ultimately, this part of the logo design involves several processes – comparison of prints where all the prints are considered on the same page. 

A key point to be noted is that for logo design and background, use only flat and solid colors and say a Big NO to gradient colors. Solid colors deliver your brand’s message strongly, whereas gradient colors don’t. 

5. Refinement and Presentation 

This is the most important step in the logo creation process. At this juncture, the brilliant logo concepts are created and will be collated into a client’s presentation document. 

As a designer, we will be showing how the logo looks like on various background colors, at different scaling levels. This would provide the client with better visualization of their brand’s logo in a real-world setup, rather than just placing the logo on a plain page. 

Choose vivid colors or a tone that is too light to show some alternatives in the logo design. Providing a logo with several color variance would help the client to choose the right one. 

Once you have decided on the colors and background, store the logo design in PDF format so that it would be easy for the client to view it. 

Logo Design Presentation 

Now, it’s time for us to prepare a visual presentation of the designed logo so that it can be easily presented to the client. 

But before we present the logo to the client, try getting feedback from trusted friends or colleagues. See if there are any mixed opinions and if there are any areas of improvement. If needed, the logo design is updated with necessary changes. 

Once it is done, it is time for the client presentation. Discuss the logo concepts with the client and explain the various logo designs with the help of the presentation. Explain in detail the story behind the logo, the color code, font, and font size. 

6. Concept Enhancements 

Everyone is a critic! No matter how perfect you think your logo design is, chances are there your client may not like it or may come up with request changes. 

The client may come up with a few suggestions and tweaks. Other times, it is usually a long series of revisions. Based on the feedback and suggestions from the client, we might work on the logo design again. At times, the client may even ask to work from scratch or come up with a new idea. That’s not a bad idea though. 

Working on the same image for hours together, you might get frustrated. Seek the help of a trusted friend or colleague. A fresh set of eyes on the final product would provide you some space for improvement that you wouldn’t have noticed before. 

The easiest thing possible is to get feedback on your logo design. The real challenge lies in interpreting and implementing the client’s feedback. Remember, your logo’s key task is to represent a brand! 

7. The Final Deliverable 

Once we have made all these changes and finalized the logo design, it is time for the final delivery. Before you send the final deliverables, get to know what design files your client needs. 

From the designer side, include the below files and submit it to the client:

• Layered source vector files, such as AI. 
• Layered EPS/PDF files (for clients who are using different vector programs). 
• High-resolution rasterized files suitable for web, images in transparent backgrounds, and in PNGs format. 
• Include logo design in several color formats such as monochrome, black, white, and the final version as well. 
• If you have used a standard format for the text, then it is important to outline the text. This is because the font format might change on computers that do not have it installed already. 
• Also, inform the client about the fonts that are used in logo design in advance, just in case if they will need them for future branding projects. 

This is the professional way of delivering the logo design to the client. It not only ensures that your client can use the logo for the long run but also serves as a great parting gift for the client. 

To Conclude: 

Good logo design takes a profound talent, but you can never know whether you have it or not. You will get to know it only when you start designing. Great logos do not happen by accident! 

An ideal logo design is a result of critical thinking, great graphic designing, interrogating, collaborating, exploring, failing, and starting over again. Each detailing of your logo, be it the color, font, size, or even the shape, might affect the kind of impression it makes on your customers. 

Once you’ve got a clear picture of the role of a logo design, you would be able to create a stronger brand identity. Although a successful logo appears to be simple, the process of creating it is quite complicated. However, the effort and investment are always worth it. 

Looking for the best logo designers in the market? Contact iNoryaSoft, a Chennai-based digital marketing company, today for getting a perfect logo design for your brand. We help brands in creating logos that are subtle yet creative and powerful. Our designers ensure that the logo we design the logo that defines the culture and value of the brand clearly and needless to say, a strong brand identity.