There is more that goes into logo design than “playing” with symbols and colors. Logos are the brand identities of businesses hence their design should be considered more deeply for the greater success of the business. As a designer, it is imperative that you have a good understanding of your client’s business so that you can have the versatility to capture and portray their vision in the logo.
This might seem like an arduous task in the beginning, but with practice and experience, you will be able to understand your client’s businesses well so that you come up with great designs to demonstrate their vision to their clients. Presented here are some of the pertinent questions you need to ask yourself as a designer to help you bring out the client’s vision in your design.
What is the most suitable logo type to use?
There are different types of logos in use today and each will be suitable for various kinds of businesses. A good understanding of your client’s business vision will help you choose on the right type of logo to design and which will help the business in portraying their to present as well as potential clients. The following are some of the common logo types you will find yourself working with most of the times-:
Woodmarks logos – these are free standing logos featuring multi-letter abbreviations like the logo for CNN, IBM, Google, eBay etc.
Letterform Logos – these logos use a single letter as in the case of Honda, Uber, MacDonald’s and Unilever.
Pictorial Logos – pictoral logos are illustrated using common symbols such as the logos for Twitter, Starbucks, and Playboy amongst others.
Abstract Logos – these logos don’t represent anything which would otherwise be recognizable. A good example of an abstract logo is Nike’s swoosh.
The choice of the specific logo type to use in designing the client’s logo will depend on factors such as the length of the company name as well as if there is a common symbol that the company would like to be associated with. In some cases, you may blend the two or more logo types to come up with a hybrid logo depicting multiple logo types.
What are the key points about the business that the logo should present?
In order to fully comprehend the vision of your client and bring it out in the logo design, it is imperative that you get to know the key selling points that the business have. These should be those specific things setting the business apart from the competition and which they will use to attract more customers.
The knowledge about the key points about the business will then form your decision on some of the logo design elements so that you make designs which will cover the key selling points. This knowledge will ultimately dictate the choice of colors, the symbols, the shapes, the type as well as the orientation of the entire design.
What are the goals of the business?
Equally important as knowing the strength of the business is the goals of the business. By understanding the goals of the business, you will be in a better position as a designer to know what exactly the business aims to achieve and also the kind of branding approach they are likely to consider.
This will give you the ability to design a logo to communicate the goals of the business to the clients and help in convincing the clients that the company has the solutions they want. Without knowing the goals of the business, the design will be blind and without any objectives hence totally useless to the business.
Where is the client’s industry headed?
By knowing the general direction of your client’s industry, you will make better decisions on the kind of approach to adopt when signing the logo. The reason for knowing about the trend is that you design a logo that will be dynamic enough to retain its relevance even if the industry has moved on a decade from the time you did the design. But while designing the logo, be careful not to base the design on the logo design trends. This might render the logo redundant once the trend has passed.
What is the client’s range of products or services?
Knowing the range of the products or services offered by the client will also help you understand their vision and design a more appropriate logo. For instance, if they are dealing with one product line, you will have a different logo compared to when they are dealing with different product lines or they have operations in multiple industries. You can simply ask them about their product lines and possibly if they intend to diversify in the future so that you make the logo to have such dynamism in line with the client’s vision.
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