From Concept to Reality: The Logo Design Process

Logos — you can easily identify which ones you like and don’t like. But when it comes to your own logo design, how do you go from an idea in your head to a new, beautifully designed logo that actually reflects your company? Having a solid process for you and your designer will make the process more streamlined, save headaches and ultimate save time and money. Here’s an inside look at the logo design process we use at Growth Labs, using a recent logo design we did for ISEBOX as an example.

Step 1: Understand Your Needs

Our method of choice to ensure we have a strong understanding of our clients business and needs is to first send a questionnaire. It avoids any ambiguity and helps clients get clear on what they really want and need. Completing this exercise internally will also help you get clear on what you’re looking for, and will ensure everyone across the team is on the same page. This part of the logo design process will help you get clear on the type of personality and design styles you’re looking for. Also, it encourages you look at your existing logo and think about what you like and why, what you don’t like and why, what other logos you like and don’t like, and again, why.

In the case of ISEBOX, we first looked at their existing logo to uncover what they liked and didn’t like. ISEBOX explained to use that the existing logo was reflecting that of some complex ‘scientific’ software (certainly not the look or feel they were trying to convey). Their existing logo, although striking, simply wasn’t attractive nor reflective of the product and brand personality.

In addition to the questionnaire, this helped us establish that our goal would be to create a logo that reflected their product, an online content platform, where content is stored and shared, along with showcasing the brand personality through the use of type, color, and overall design.

Step 2: Initial Sketches & Rationale

The next step in the logo design process is to have your designer to complete some initial logo sketches. Three concepts are usually good. And, we don’t mean rendered, indesign-type files, we mean actual hand drawn sketches.

It’s always good for your designer to explain their thought process and rationale behind their ideas. Sometimes their subtle creative inclusions aren’t so obvious but once explained become genius. It really is all about communicating and making sure you have a solid understanding what the designer or agency is going after.

For ISEBOX, we took 3 different approaches “to create a logo that reflected their product, an online content platform, where content is stored and shared on”.

Concept 1 — Typographic Approach: This concept took a typographic approach to communicating the ISEBOX brand, in a more literal way with a “boxy” type and by focusing on visual box elements that relate to the name (ISE)BOX, bringing everything together, full circle.

Concept 2 — Content Focus: This concept went beyond typography, and focused on imagery. The focus of this concept was to communicate that ISEBOX stores and shares content, leveraging paper as a visual representation because it’s easy to digest and easily recognized.

Concept 3 — Putting the Box in ISEBOX: We again took a more image-based approach with this concept, but instead of focusing on content we focused on box imagery to represent the storage of content. One aspect of this focused on the movement of content, using arrows to visually represent movement, with the other representation being more literal — using a box image.

Step 3: Initial Round of Feedback

Once the initial concepts have been presented, it’s time to get feedback. Look at the designs and consider:

• Does this address our main goal? In the case of ISEBOX it was “a logo that reflected their product”
• Does it reflect the responses/direction given in the questionnaire?
• What do you like about the logos? and why?
• What do you not like about the logos? and why?

Important! To avoid disaster, make sure all feedback is consolidated and that the entire team is on board and that there is not contradictory feedback. This will make the process smooth, seamless, and more efficient.

Step 4: Revised Logos & Feedback

Now that the designer or agency has a better idea of the direction you want to take, it is time to narrow it down. This time the logos can be designed in InDesign. In the case of ISEBOX, we presented essentially 3 options, with variations and the rationale behind them, that you can see below.

Step 5: Final Logo Design Concepts

After that last round of feedback, you should be getting close to the final design. In the case of ISEBOX, we nailed down one final concept of different variations. You can see them below.

Now it was time for the client to make a final decision — drumroll, please!

Step 6: Final Decision on Logo

This step may be the easiest or most difficult — making that final decision! In the case of ISEBOX the final client landed on this for the final logo.

BEFORE

AFTER

The ‘before’ logo shown above was the old version of the logo, looking to be revived with some personality. Now! We can see how the ‘after’ logo is clean, simple and it better reflects ISEBOX’s product offering. The box conveys the concept of storing content while the arrows reflect the movement and sharing of that content. Through the type and color, we were also able to reflect the clean, professional and modern brand that ISEBOX is.

Life has been restored into the ISEBOX logo!

ISEBOX was pretty excited too.

“Currently 6 years in and growing, ISEBOX needed a new identity that embodied who we are and what we do. Our previous branding and logo did nothing to reflect that — partly because we didn’t know. Growth Labs has a unique process that helped us curate our thoughts to target what we wanted to achieve — and the result is fantastic. Everything from our color palette to our instantly recognizable logo. We feel comfortable heading into the next chapter of our journey.”

- Sal Salpietro, CTO and Co-Founder of ISEBOX

Step 7: Share & Celebrate

You did it! From idea to a new logo! Don’t forget to share and celebrate!

Next Steps

Now that you have a new logo, you should be updating your marketing materials to match your new look and feel. Start with a brand guidelines manual. This will outline the proper usage and placement of the new logo — from the font (type), colours, spacing and more. Next, use the brand guidelines to make sure your social media channels, website, marketing collateral etc are all in align with your new look and feel.

Want to read the full case study on how we transformed ISEBOX’s logo? Read the Full Case Study.

Originally published at www.growthlabs.marketing.