Before pen hits paper
on any new logo design project, thorough research is essential. Here are five
logo design tips for nailing this crucial first stage of the process.
01. Understand your competition
Apple
cut through the traditional computing sector like a hot knife through butter in
the 80s, and has since evolved into one of the world’s most valuable brands
Before you even start
working up a logo design concept, ensure you research your target market
thoroughly. Your client should be able to provide some information about their
competitors to get you started.
Compare all the logos
in their competitive set. This research may well reveal some entrenched
branding conventions in that market sector, and that can sometimes help your
process by playing on familiar visual associations.
But bear in mind that
many of the world’s most recognizable logo designs stand out specifically
because they eschew trends and think differently.
02.
Ask the right questions
Strategy is becoming an increasingly important part of the
branding process. What this means in practice will often depend on the scale of
the project, but it all starts with asking the right questions.
Michael Johnson’s recent book Branding: In Five and a Half Steps
is dedicated to Johnson banks’ creative process, and covers complex challenges
such as formulating brand strategy in far more detail than we could ever hope
to here.
In it, Johnson advocates asking the following six things of the
brand you’re working on as a starting point: Why are we here?; What do we do,
and how do we do it?; What makes us different?; Who are we here for?; What do
we value the most?; and finally, What’s our personality?
03.
Stay flexible during the process
Once you’ve formulated a strategy, you don’t have to set it in
stone. There’s a reason that Johnson banks’ creative process has that extra
half step: number 2.5 represents the grey area between strategy and design.
According to Johnson, it can be a two-way street. Some
conceptual, strategic ideas that work in theory may fall apart in practice when visualized; conversely, a compelling visual solution that emerges from
left-field during the design stage can feed back into stage two and help evolve
the strategy retrospectively.
04.
Respect a brand’s heritage
Widely heralded as a trend in 2016, the so-called ’retro
branding’ movement was kicked off by North’s much-lauded re brand of Co-op,
which reinvigorated its original 1960s mark and won one of CA’s coveted Brand
Impact Awards in the process.
Nat West and Kodak followed within a few months, but we argued here on CB that we should be wary of the retro design trend. However, where
genuine heritage and untapped potential exists in a mark, avoid throwing the
baby out with the bath water and consider bringing it to the fore.
“It's vital to put your ego to one side and not dismiss designs
created by others – and in doing so consider evolution as well as revolution,”
argued North co-founder Stephen Gilmore in an essay in Computer Arts issue 259.
05.
Remember: a logo is just one ingredient
As Brand Impact Awards judges Bruce Duck worth and Mark Bonner
discuss in this video filmed during 2016’s judging day, logo design is
just one small part of the modern branding process.
As Bonner puts it, the pyramid has inverted: people now engage
with a brand through a huge variety of different touch points, and the logo is
not always their first point of contact with a brand.
Keep this in mind as you develop your logo design: stay
versatile and flexible, and consider how the logo interacts with the rest of
the brand experience, from packaging to tone of voice.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thank you for the comments.