Redesigning our Logo Form
At Eclectic Source, we noticed one thing:
When creating something new, people rarely know what they want.
Most people have an inkling of what they like and can judge when something looks good. But to accurately pre-describe a new creation and be satisfied with it 100% after it has been made the first time, is a rarity.
Brief context:
The Eclectic Source designs logos and creates brand identities (amongst other things) for small and medium scale businesses. We ask potential clients to fill an online form which provides the brief for the design.
As designers, we’ve seen this scenario a few times- A client requests a logo design with specific features, placement details and colour schemes, but once we produce the requested design, it is often not quite right. Sometimes it even discourages the requester from the original idea, which in-turn could restart the process.
As always, our job for the client is to make a brand identity that fits with the company’s purpose, vision and business objectives. From our experience of designing just over a hundred logos, we’ve noticed a few patterns, and realised the root cause of some of our problems may be in our design form.
If we take the notion that people don’t know what they want, but they know what they like, and what is good (for them, the brand, their businesses, and so on), then how do we structure a form that extracts the right info for a logo design?
The answer is asking the right questions.
In our previous form, we put a lot of emphasis on freedom of expression and asked potential clients up front:
‘What are your design preferences?’
Over time, we realised the answers to this question varied too much and we often did not get the concise information we needed. To that effect, we changed our form to ask more guided questions such as:
‘What industry is your business in?’ ‘Describe your ideal customer’
This provides a good Segway to choosing the right features such as colour. If your business is tech oriented then you would probably lean towards the colour blue or black (for trust and quality). If your venture is in the food industry, your brand would probably embrace red, green or yellow (representative of food produce such as peppers and peas).
Another question field we decided to add is Font Type. A font can make or break a design as we have witnessed in the past so it was important that we addressed it from the onset.
In the redesign, we decided font type rather than font was better for the client as it removed pressure on choosing the right font. We varied the type options from Corporate to Casual to Distressed and so on, as well as put visual examples to aid in making the right decision.
The idea is to give us some loose constraints to work with rather than rigid ones.
We also touched on other fields such as customer type and competitors but we do not want to bore you with the details so we chose two examples we believe sets the tone of why we redesigned our logo form.
Important to note that we also follow up with emails and calls to the client to get a deeper understanding. But at least by then, the first hurdle is covered and there is a connection we can work with.
If you are a designer or would like a logo for your venture, why not give our new form a try? You could also give us feedback on the new design if you wish.
Thanks for reading.
