An effective business logo is as important as the business itself. Like we all know, a logo is the face of any business, a business without a logo doesn’t have any face, as it is the logo that people would use to recognize and remember a business. While a logo is the face of any business, an effective logo is not just a face of a business, it gives the business an identity and it is what identifies the business and sets the business apart from the crowd.
When creating a business logo design, I always break the process down into various phases. The discovery phase, the research phase, the sketching phase, the execution phase and the presentation phase. This allows me to focus properly and be effective to achieve the best results… The discovery phase is where I get to have a conversation with the client to know more about the business. In this phase, I try to get as much information and knowledge about the business as I can. This is a very vital and important stage as it would help me immensely and set the base for the logo design process.
The research phase is really fun… not as important as the first phase, but important and very useful. With a very elaborate and enough information and knowledge gotten from the discovery phase, the research phase can be skipped and still create a successful logo. In the research phase, I research about the industry and type of the business. I try to gather as enough information about the competitors and target customers of the business and also similar businesses. While this phase might not so important as the first phase, it is important and very useful as it gives me the general idea of what is common and already working in the business’s industry and how to set the business apart from the competitors.
The sketching phase is one of my favorite phases because it is where I allow my ideas and creativity to run wild. I like to do my sketching using a simple pencil and paper, and sometimes I do it using a pen tablet sketching directly on the computer, but I prefer to do it the old school way with a pencil and paper because it allows me to focus on the sketching and not distracted by software features. I like to be free and just go with the flow rather than trying to think too much when in the sketching phase because it means that I can produce as many sketches as possible and as I keep going, something would begin to click and start aligning with what I want to achieve. Sometimes something clicks immediately after a few sketches, sometimes it takes several days or weeks for things to begin to click. Once I have the sketches, I would begin to filter out the ones that work and narrow it down more till I’m left with about three solid and effective sketches before I can move to the next phase.
The execution phase is the next phase after I have completed the sketching phase. The execution phase is basically digitalizing my sketch and turning the sketch into a final vector logo design. This is my favorite phases because it brings my ideas to life and I get to see my weeks of thinking and sketches come to life and be transformed into a logo. I use a vector design software for all my logo designs so as to keep my logos fully customizable and scalable to any size that can be imagined without losing any quality.
The presentation phase is the final phase in my logo design. This is where I put together the logo design in a more appealing way and also super impose the logo on different surfaces and backgrounds relating to the business, so as to give a general idea of how the logo would be used and how the logo would look like when it is being put to use in the business. This is only for presentation purposes alone and the main logo would be delivered as a standalone on different vector and image file formats ready for use.