How To Design A Logo

Written by Jacob Cass on Tuesday, January 8, 2008 – 9:00 am

Want to know how to design a logo like a professional and have all the resources you need in just one post? Then this is the post for you… Learn professional logo design in just 5 steps! This article was posted on David Airey’s blog for a guest post on 5 Vital Logo Design Tips.

1. Learn What A Logo Is & What It Represents

Before you design a logo, you must understand what a logo is, what it represents and what it is supposed to do. A logo is not just a mark - a logo reflects a business’s commercial brand via the use of shape, fonts, colour, and / or images.

A logo is for inspiring trust, recognition and admiration for a company or product and it is our job as designers to create a logo that will do its job.

One must know what a logo is before continuing.

For further Reading on what is a logo check out Wikipedia’s Definition or CreativeBits’s discussion on what is a logo?

2. Know The Rules & Principles Of Logo Design

Now that you know what a logo is supposed to do, and what it should represent you now must learn about what makes a great logo aka; the basic rules and principles of logo design.

As David quotes…
1. A logo must be describable
2. A logo must be memorable
3. A logo must be effective without colour
4. A logo must be scalable i.e. effective when just an inch in size

For Further reading on the rules and principles of great logo design I highly recommend to read the logo design tips from Logo Factory before continuing.

3. Learn Off Other’s Successes & Mistakes

Successful Logos

Now you know what the rules of logo design are, you can distinguish the difference between a good and a bad logo… By knowing what other logos have succeeded and why they have succeeded gives a great insight into what makes a good logo.

For example, lets look at the classic Nike Swoosh. This logo was created by Caroline Davidson in 1971 for only $35 yet it still a strong, memorable logo, effective without colour and easily scalable. It is simple, fluid and fast and represents the wing in the famous statue of the Greek Goddess of victory, Nike - something perfect for a sporting apparel business. Nike is just one of many great logos, think about other famous brands that you know about and check out their logos - what makes them successful?

For more quality, lesser known logos I recommend checking out LogoPond or going to your local book store or library and looking at a logo book.

The Not So Successful Logos

We can also learn off logos that have not been as successful such as the ones in the above picture. Some more very bad logos can be seen in the post ‘Is Your Design Phallic? As seen in that post, some logos can depict things that may have not always be noticeable to the designer (as in the middle logo above) or they could just be plain bad design, as in the logo to the right.

4. Establish Your Own Logo Design Process

Now that we know what a logo is, and what the principles and rules of logo design are and what makes a successful logo we can now finally begin the design process. This it hardest part of the 5 steps and is its own topic in itself - Each persons logo design process is different and experience usually is the key factor in creating your own logo design process but for an example of a well established logo design process check out David Airey’s.

In short, a logo design process usually consists of

1. The Design Brief
2. Research & Brainstorming
3. Sketching
4. Prototyping & Conceptualising (See Step 5)
5. Send To Client For Review
6. Revise & Add Finishing Touches
7. Supply Files To Client and Give Customer Service

If you ever get stuck before or during your design process check out this great article on How To Boost Your Creativity.

5. Learn The Software & Complete The Logo

After you have got your design process sorted out, it is usually a good time to begin mastering your software (Here is a short tutorial for beginners). But before I get to that, I just want to point out that Step 4 and Step 5 overlap - as it is a catch 22 situation… You can’t design a logo by just hopping straight onto the computer nor can you design a logo without knowing your software (such as Adobe Illustrator).

Anyway, putting this aside, after you have got your initial ideas and sketches from brainstorming you can then usually jump onto the computer to start digitising your logo. After you have got a great concept(s) digitised you can send it to your client, get revisions, and eventually complete the logo and thus, you have successfully created a professional logo.

Do you have any other tips or suggestions on how to create a professional logo?

Related Articles:

• Winner Of The Free Professional Logo Competition (15)
• Why logo design does not cost $5.00 (78)
• The Logo Design Process of TOP graphic designers (35)
• Portfolio (11)

Tags: Logo Design
Posted in Logo Design