Before I even start putting pen/pencil to paper, we (you and I) will have had a good discussion about your company’s bigger aims, mission statement, key values and a brief agreed for delivery of the design. This could be in person or via zoom.
The first step before any design is started is to perform an audit of existing logos within the category. This is particularly important within certain sectors such as food and drink because logos usually sit on packaging which may be sold as ecommerce or sit on shelf competing for attention amongst other brands. This also ensures that any ideas I create are original and not replicated.
An audit usually takes an hour or so of which it is collated in contact sheet form to add to the presentation.
Next up, brain storming. This is where I will take your brief, likes and dislikes and any visual inspiration of styles or design that you particularly like. I will spend time looking at your brief, highlighting key points that are important to you. Then I will spend another hour or so looking at inspiration and generating some initial ideas that will form the basis of my designs.
Then onto the sketching phase. I will sketch initial ideas with pencil and transfer some to the computer. I will also look at a selection of font styles for the brief. The flow between pencil and paper and computer will continue until I have the bare bones of some initial ideas. I will keep working and refining these ideas until I have several logos that I feel are worth developing further. In this process I may have created up to 10 different sketch ideas and logos but which are not shown to you. This complete process could take up to a day to produce.
Then I will collate the presentation and make some sense of the order of what is presented. This may take an hour.
As you can see we have only got to the design concept stage, having spent up to a day and a half working on your logo. Next we need to embark on a refinement stage on your chosen logo. All logos whether graphical or hand drawn need to be redrawn for complete symmetry, minimum line width for printing and final colour palette explored. This could take 3-4 hours.
Once this has been presented and approved, the logo suite will be created which could take up to 2 hours to save out. Bearing in mind you will have 4 colour variations of your logo (colour, black and white both in positive and negative formats) which then need to be saved out to multiple formats, such as ai, eps, svg, png, jpg, resulting in around 20-30 files. Then a brand board is created with your logo colours in print and digital which can be used by you as a guide for liaising with printers and other suppliers. This takes about an hour to produce.
You will then be supplied your logo suite by a downloadable link for safe keeping. That totals around 2 days for your logo work.
