Create Valuable and Effective Logos

1. Class intro: Hi and welcome to this Skillshare course on how to create a valuable and effective logo. My name is [inaudible] and I've running my brand new studio for about six years now, working with different companies in the sustainable and NGO sector. I've been involved in everything from packaging design, social campaigns, and of course, logo design. I think a logo that is really well-crafted and has a really good solid research behind it, is one of the most valuable things you can offer your clients. If you're new to logo design, this class will give you lots of great foundational knowledge about what makes a good logo and how to start thinking about your creative process. If you've been designing for a while, I think that you will find the presentation part and creating these really lovely collaborations with your clients, to maybe be the most valuable parts for you. The class project for this class will be to create a logo for a fictional company and to put logo on a beautiful mock-up ready for presentation. I hope that this class will help you accomplish a few things. First of all, I hope it helps you feel more confident in your design skills and that you learn a couple new tricks that you can bring to your own business. Secondly, I hope that it will help you feel that you can charge more for your work and that you can create something that will be truly valuable for your clients, and you can sell it in a way that you feel really excited about and that your clients are really happy to buy into. This way of designing logos will not only create timeless marks, but it will help you build long-lasting relationships with your clients. I'm really excited to get started and I can't wait to see you in class. 2. What makes a logo good?: [MUSIC] There are a couple of things that are universally known by experts to be something that you want to look out for in a really high-quality, long-lasting logo, and that is that you want it to be simple. The best logos are those that are not trying to communicate too much, but they are trying to be identifiable. Rather than communication and trying to explain what your company is doing through your logo, you want it to be something that can easily be identified and associated with a company. Instead of, let's say, every hairdresser having a scissor as a logo, we want to make sure that we create something that can be fluent and flexible and grow with you if your business changes over time. This also makes you a lot more distinguishable from your competitors. You also want the logo that you're creating to be appropriate for the industry that you're designing for. There's always an inherent language when we think about any type of business or industry in general. That's why, let's say, if you think of a cupcake store and a lawyer, then logos that you have in mind would probably not look the same. When we know a little bit more about what is appropriate for a specific industry, we can look at what is already out there and decide how much we want to go away from it. This is a really important part of the design process. To make sure that your logo will work in all situations and work long-term, I think it's always a good idea to start designing in black and whites. If we are reliant on color for our design, it means that in some cases when maybe the logo is being printed by a third party and suddenly it's in black and white, we don't really understand what it's saying or maybe there's a little bit of confusion around the mark. That is something that can really corrode brand recognition and identity. Always start in black and white. A good logo is also flexible to fit different use cases. If you're thinking about how a logo will be used, there are so many ways that you might see and interact with the logo. It might be something like a really small social media icon in a round format. Maybe it's on a packaging that you have for your company, like a bag or a pizza box. Maybe it's on the side of a truck or on a billboard. We really want to make sure that the logo that we're creating is specifically made for the use cases where it will be. I think it's always a good thing to have a version for social media, and to have a version for bigger formats, maybe one for vertical and one for horizontal. This is often referred to as a responsive logo, meaning that it can respond to different situations and different sizes. A lot of companies do this by creating a primary mark, and then creating versions for perhaps you're stacking the logo or creating a monogram or an icon. You can also do this by having information like a tagline or the year that the company was established as little things that you can add and remove depending on situation. This can add more information to the logo without it having to be something that's always there. In your meetings with the clients, especially at the beginning of the project, you want to make sure that you're trying to understand all of the different aspects about how their company is running, where the logo will be seen and visible so that you know all of those different use cases. If you're working with a brand that already has an existing logo, you also want to make sure that you're really asking questions about what was not working with the previous logo. Usually, there can be a mix of personal preferences like, oh, I just didn't think it represented our brand, so then you might have to dig a little bit deeper into what that actually means practically and how it connects with their customers rather than just personal preference. But you might also get a lot of very practical details like, I just didn't work in small formats, or people thought it was really confusing, or it didn't look like our industry, for example. Making sure that you ask both about the different formats and use cases of the logo, but also about what hasn't been working and their goals. A good logo is also one that fits the specific company and their goals and vision. Before you design, I think it's always a good idea to start setting up some goals for what does a successful project or logo look like to you? You ask the client if you had your dream logo, what would it accomplish? You could do this by setting some "how might we" questions and goals. For example, how might we create a logo that better resonates with our younger audience? Or how might we create a logo that works in small formats? Setting up these goals from the beginning it will give you a guiding light as you're creating something. This will be a lot easier for both you and the client as you're building this communication over time, to say, okay, this was the goal of the project, we're creating a logo that will resonate with the younger audience, and here is why we made these decisions. Now that we know a little bit more about what makes a good logo and an effective logo, we're going to be going into the first stage, which is a super important one, and that's the research phase. 3. Logo research: [MUSIC] Great, so now we're going to go into logo research. I want to explain a little bit what I mean by this, because I think most people purely think about visual research. That can be things like looking for inspiration pictures, looking at the logos, and moodboards. My background is actually in science [LAUGHTER] and research. So I really love this portion because I think there is so much more that we can reveal, especially around psychology, and behavior from the customers, that we can use and integrate into the brand and the logo. As I mentioned, I think that there are two parts to logo research. The first one is the visual aspects, and the second one is the psychology aspect. If we start by the visual aspect, here you'll want to look at a couple of different categories while you're doing your research. The first one is looking at the industry itself, let's say you're working with a vegan food brand. What you'll want to do is you want to have a look at both other vegan brands in general, and specifically vegan food brands, and maybe some vegetarian or other food brands that still could attract the same type of customers. What you want to look out for is the type of changes that have been going on in the industry, have a lot of them rebranded recently, and what has happened, why did they do that rebrand, and how is it changing? If you're noticing that a lot of the companies are, let's say going a lot more simple and clean their design, or we'll be starting to use Lamar illustration, and feeling a lot more personable, and maybe using humor. That is something that you can start incorporating into your own design, because you know that they have done a lot of research themselves, and you can see the trends of the market and what's happening in general. I think it's also a good idea to just start specifically looking at their logos. What are they doing with their logos, and how is it tying into the rest of the visual language? Are you starting to see logos that are very simple, are they very colorful, illustrated, do they have a very clean digital look, or are they a little bit more hand-drawn, or creative looking? Save everything that you find, and put it either in a folder, or a Pinterest [LAUGHTER] board, or something like that where you can easily access it. I think it's also a good idea to take notes, because sometimes if you just save images, at least this is true for me, you might forget why you saved that specific image. So annotate images, or put it together in a little bit of a summary report for yourself. Next up, you want to look at the visuals in terms of other brands that will attract the same target audience. Let's say that the vegan brands are also very interested in different vegan clothing brands, or maybe specific health brands, for example. Then you can have a look at the trends, and the visuals, and logo designs that are going on that space. Next step we can look at the psychology research aspect, and this is where you really want to try to understand how this customer is thinking, what they're caring about, and why they would make different purchasing decisions. What I'd like to start with is first defining who they are through something like a persona, you can think about what their pin-points are, what their demographics are, things like age and perhaps where they live, and what their income level is, trying to get an idea of their interests, and what a typical day looks like. But I think it's important to move beyond this, and also is really start thinking about, what are their pin-points? Maybe they can't find any really good vegan restaurants at the moment. Why do they want a vegan restaurant? Maybe they want to go and hang out with some friends after work, and wind down after a long week. Then we want to think about the atmosphere that, that creates. We want to have a brand in that case that is very welcoming, and friendly, that is good for groups, maybe we're creating this fun vibe, or relaxing after a long week. Trying to think about all these steps of the user journey in terms of shopping, or going to even a physical location , or buying products. As part of the research, I think it's also really important to talk to your client and ask what they already know about their customers. Depending on how old the company is, they might have a turnover information, [LAUGHTER] or they might not know that much yet. But usually companies start with some target audience in mind. Now what you want to do is, you make sure that you ask very specific questions about who these people are, and then you need to validate that. If let's say they're saying that, all our current customers are this age group, you can say all that's really interesting. Have you found that out through analytics, or focus groups, or is it more of something that you're expecting, or thinking that it will be? Try to find out how validated this information is just so that you're really basing your research and your decisions on facts rather than hunches. Once you have this information from your client, you'll want to go and check what it looks like in the rest of the industry. Let's say that your client is saying, we want our target audience to be women in their 30s, for example. Then you go to competitors who have a very similar products, and you'll see if their clients, or their customers are they women in their 30s? If they're not, is that a marketing opportunity, and then how can we come to a conclusion, or a brand, or logo that will attract women so that this industry is maybe being a little bit disrupted in that way? But maybe you're finding that actually the women in [LAUGHTER] their 30s are not interested in this product, and it's much easier to reach, let's say, teenagers, or different age group, for example. This research will really help your customers, and your clients find out if their thinking and their assumptions are correct. So why do we do all [LAUGHTER] this work if we're designing a logo? Well, I think the most important thing is if we're designing a logo that is supposed to be really effective and valuable for our clients, it will only be effective and valuable if it's hitting the target audience, if it's understanding the market, if it's suitable for the industry that you're in. If it's following the trends without being too trendy, and still being timeless, and looking at how we run or worked in the past. So if we have all of this information, we're not just creating something that is beautiful, or well-crafted, but it will also be something that is actually going to really hit the nail on the head on who it's for. I know this can sound [LAUGHTER] like a lot of work for logo design, but I promise you it's better to charge more and create something that is really valuable for your clients that they won't have to re-invest in all the time. This is investment that will last them for a long time, so that's also a way that you can pitch it to your clients. Great, so now that we have all of this great foundational work done, we're going to talk about how to come up with really good ideas 4. Having good ideas: [MUSIC] Good ideas take time and I'm sure you've noticed this. I think every time I go into a creative project, I have that slight panic at the beginning of the project from thinking, I'm never going to have this perfect idea because I don't have it yet. But I know because I have a process that it takes time and you have to go through a lot of ideas and think about a lot of options before you get to that aha moment or those perfect ideas that you feel really excited about. I think there are two aspects here. First of all, we really need to make sure that we are giving and allowing yourself enough time when we're planning out the projects. Don't be afraid to push back if your client is trying to rush the projects. Creativity means that we need to take in lots of inspiration from different places and then create something new and unique. The risk is that if we're trying to rush it, it will feel very derivative or it just won't have time to develop into that really good idea. The second part is, you need to keep the motivation up. Try to not see it as a performance where you have to quickly get out that perfect idea so that you can keep moving on and keep refining it. Don't be afraid to try out lots of things, and see what is working and what is not working. Take some time apart from it and come back and see it with fresh eyes. I also like to have focused and unfocused inspiration time. When you've done your research, you've already seen so much different interesting materials. But sometimes when we have all this information, we still like to look at inspiration. I think it's a good idea to have focused and unfocused inspiration time. What I mean by that is, for the focused inspiration time, you're going to look specifically at logos, logos in your industry, logos that are appropriate to your target audience. Inspiration that you feel is directly relatable to the type of mark that you want to design. For the unfocused creative or inspiration time, you can look at anything that isn't logo design. Basically, go to a museum that feels inspirational or attend an event from this industry, or maybe read a book that's really inspiring about this field. Watch a movie, something that feels like it could be adding value and a little bit of inspiration and ideas to your industry and to your work, but it's not directly looking at logos. Because if we just look at logos, it can be a little bit derivative and it's hard to get out of those sort of truck minds that we get into when we start seeing the same type of marks over and over. The last piece of advice that I have when you're trying to come up with good ideas, and you're at the sketching stage, it's to not get too attached to one idea. I know that sometimes you have an idea that feels like it is the perfect idea. This is the only thing I need to focus on and I need to leave everything behind. But what I found a lot of the times is if I push through and I say, "Okay, great, I have this idea. I'm going to put it in my back pocket and I'm going to keep trying things." I usually come up with something even better, or if I just stick with the one idea, I might notice further down the line that actually this idea doesn't really work that well on small formats or there's something else that just isn't quite perfect with it. Then you don't have any other ideas to fall back on. Don't get too attached to one idea. Try to push through it and just create, create, create, and [inaudible] those references. Again, take time away from them, come back and look at them from afar, and really try to sort out the things that are working and not working. Now that we have a little bit about how to do the sketching and coming up with ideas. We're going to be looking at how to create the mark and present it in a great way so that your client will feel the hard work that you've put in and the enthusiasm about the mark that you've designed. 5. Designing your logo: [MUSIC] You have your beautiful sketch that you feel excited about. Now it's time to refine it and create a mark that is ready to present to the client. I like to start with typefaces. Typefaces can be one of those things that really sets the tone for the mark. Many times, you might be designing a wordmark where you don't have an icon or any other aspect that is illustrated. In this case, picking the right typeface is perhaps even more crucial. They can give you a sense of retro. They can give you a sense of history, may be ultramodern. They can feel bold and powerful. They can feel really airy and easygoing. There's a lot of things that you can put personality into typefaces. What I'd like to start doing is just to type out the company name in Adobe Illustrator where I'm working, and then just test out a bunch of typefaces. Sometimes I already have some in mind that I feel might be a good fit, but you never really know. Start by just putting a lot of options on the board and see what starts feeling right. Now that we have all the different typefaces written out that you're interested in, you can start to have a look at the spacing between the different letters. You can start to look at either adjusting the space between just individual letters if there's something that doesn't feel right, and this is referred as to currently. You can also decide to make the space between all of the letters much wider or much more narrow, and that's referred to as tracking. If you think about big fashion houses that are really high-end and luxury, they often have all caps logos with a lot of tracking. You can start to create a lot of moods just by adjusting the space between each of the letters. You can also start to make the space very narrow and start combining letters or making little flourishes to create a little bit of a more unique feeling. If you have an icon that you'll also want to incorporate, you also want to think, of course, about both the proportions of the icon and the wordmark and the spacing and the lockups that you can create. There are lots of different ways that you can place the icon. You can have it just by itself. You could have it on top or next to the wordmark, and you could have it stacked together or you could place a line between the icon and the stack logo. There are basically infinite possibilities. But you'll want to think about how it can break apart and come together in different responsive formats. You can also, of course, here try to add the tagline, and see how that's going to work and making sure that the priority and the hierarchy of the information is right. If you want, let's say, them to see the name of the company first, you'll probably want to make that bolder or larger to make sure that's coming across first. You also want to make sure the tagline isn't too small because that's something I see really commonly, that a tagline just becomes super-duper small. You also want to have enough contrast between the wordmark and the slug. If they're basically the same size, that can also become an issue because the hierarchy is not there anymore. Something that I really think it's important to think about is also for your logo and your mark to be both inclusive and sensitive to different cultures and applications. When I'm talking about making it inclusive, I think it's always really good to think about the contrast of both your mark, the proportions and the dimensions of everything, and also, of course, the colors. There are some really good sites that you can use, and I'll put some up here on the screen where you can basically check if the contrast is good and readable for all kinds of different divisions. It can be if you have colorblindness or if you, like me, maybe can't read that well without glasses or if you just have a visual impairment of any kind. Another consideration could be things like color combinations or if the shape of your mark could mean different things in different cultures. Of course, this only really matters if your brand is going to be used in those specific markets. But this is really where that research comes in again. If you know that the logo is going to be used, let's say internationally, you might want to have a look and make sure that there's nothing that could have a different meaning that you didn't intend it to have. One way you can do this is by using a tool like TinEye, for example, where you reverse image searching and seeing if you're coming across anything that could be misconstrued with your mark that maybe you don't want it to be. One last thing you can do, which is definitely not necessary, but sometimes it's something I like to have done just to check as well, and that is to do a quick trademark search on the mark that you've created. Of course, as a designer, you are not required to have any sort of legal expertise, and if your client is worried about trademarks, they need to hire a lawyer for that. But I just sometimes like to have a look to see that there isn't something that is obviously very similar. For example, there's a website called Repo, which is a brand database where you can basically do a similar thing like a reverse image search, or you can search for the name of the company and see if there's anything that's coming up that is a similar match. Great, so now that you have the different lockups and the different versions that you feel super happy about, the next video is going to be all about preparing that presentation to show it to your clients. 6. Presenting work to clients: When I'm preparing any sort of presentation for a client, I always like to put a couple of slides at the beginning that I'm just stating the goals again of both the project at large and the meeting that we're about to have. If you're able to really do try to have the meeting either in person or that can be also, of course, over video, but I really don't suggest just sending the presentation to the client and hoping for the best. In my experience, regardless of how much effort you put in and how much texts that you write to explain the different thinking behind your designs, if you're not there to talk them through it one step at a time, clients sometimes jump to different sections or they might look at the logo and not read the texts so much. This is really both devaluing the work that you've put in, but it's also much more likely to lead to confusion and revisions and just less appreciation of the work, and you eventually end up doing more work. If you can, try to have a meeting where you're talking with the client through the presentation. After you have those introductory slides, where you state the goals, I think it's a really good idea to have a couple of different slides that shows off the logo. If you have multiple concepts, then just show the same exact structure for each one. First, I'd like to show the logo just in black and white. Either you can choose to show it in black on white background and white on black background, or maybe just one of the two, just to show that the logo works really well in black and white. Next up, I'd like to show the color selection and the different color combinations. Sometimes the logo works well with, let's say, if you have a blue and an orange and a gray, maybe the blue works in all other combinations, but maybe the orange and the gray has too low of a contrast, then you can show your client the different acceptable versions of the logo to show the different options that they have and the flexibility of the brand. After the colors, I like to go into different applications, and this is where mockups are really going to be your friend. Typically, when the client starts seeing mockups and their logo in action and really showing them examples of what it could look like in the real world, that's when it really starts sinking in and they can wrap their head around what is actually going to happen when they start using this logo. It feels a lot more polished and well-worked and presented. Make sure that you're investing in a couple of good mockups, or creating them yourself, and you can reuse them for every project if you like. I think it's a good idea to pick mockups that feel very specific to your clients, and sometimes you can use the same mockup but just alter, let's say, the textures and the colors and the lighting to just create a little bit of a different vibe. I like to have a couple ones to show different applications, so things like social media or print or let's say a business card and a hat or a t-shirt, for example. These are things that they're going to be using, things that you know that they're going to need an application for. Here, you can also use the different mockups, let's say a vertical and horizontal lockup, to show the breadth of the mark that you've created. At the end, I also really like to create a couple of inspirational images. If you know that there are small brand, and they're working towards having their own storefront, then you could also put it, let's say, on the sign, on the storefront, or on a big billboard, for example. These are things that will just get them really excited about the mark and seeing the growth potential that you've created. As you're talking them through the presentation, and you can also write this out, always be really clear with why you made the different design decisions. If you've put a vertical lockup on one mockup and you've put the icon on another, talk them through why that is the right choice and how that is helping them create a stronger brand. If you have multiple concepts to show, I think it's always a good idea to have some sort of a comparison slide at the end where you can either put the same mockup for all of the different logos, or I like to usually just put the black and white ones so that they can see, right, these were the different ones. Because as you're going through the presentation, it typically is a lot for your client to take in. They might want to go back through the presentation a couple of different times. They might even want to sit with it or talk to other decision-makers in the company. By having all of these motivations and these clear examples, you're really showing all of the strategic work that you're bringing in that the logo is going to work in all of the practical applications that they need it to. This is adding a lot more value, which means you can charge more and you can show them that this is an investment for them. Now that we've created the concepts, you might have some iterations that you want to implement. But after that, we're going to be jumping right into the support section. That's what we're going to talk about next. 7. Handoff and support: [MUSIC] Amazing. Now that you've created this beautiful mark that your client is excited about, we need to make sure that it's easy for your client to use the mark correctly. To do that, we need to do two things. The first one is we need to prepare files that are easy for them to use. That might mean that you're preparing, let's say all of the different color combinations or the different lockups so that they never have to worry about placing the icons and the word mark together in the perfect lockup. It's already done for them. Or let's say if you are creating the one for social media, you might want to make sure it's in the right dimensions, that it has the right color combination that you're suggesting. Just making sure that you're creating the folders for them, labeling them, let's say social media or print if you creating, let's say different versions for RGB and CMYK for digital imprint. This way you're making sure that your client doesn't have to figure anything out, there is an easy system for them to describe the thing that they need. Next up, we need some sort of guide to tell them how to use it. This might be a style or a brand guide, depending on the extent of the project you can include different things. But I think it's always a good idea to have some sort of statement about the persona, the target audience, and the mission of the company. Then we can jump into the different uses of the logo. Let's say things that we are representing. Logo in black and whites, proportions, and different lockup options. Look at the colors and then social media versus print or let's say you're doing social media campaigns, how does that work with the logo? It's always good idea to anything that you think could be an issue, you should put how to do that and how to avoid it. Perhaps your client might be distorting the logo by not keeping the proportions, that's something that you could state and show what the proportion should be. In my experience, you can create a template for what one of these logo guides could look like and then you basically just populate it with a new project information, so you only have to create this template once. Even though it's a lot of work upfront and your client will get all of this value, you only have to do that once and then it's just a little bit of tweaking and putting in new designs. Occasionally, your client might ask for a different file formats. Sometimes you might only hand off the files that are exported like PNGs and JPEGs. In some cases they want the actually editable files like Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop files, but sometimes clients don't have access to these editable programs and they might ask for files like Canvas, for example, for social media posts. Make sure that you're asking also upfront what the requirements of the project are and that you can offer different flexible formats that work for them. Lastly, I think it's always a good idea to have some hand-off package at the end, where you think the client for the project perhaps asked for a testimonial and you can also ask for a referral if you like. If you're looking to get more work from these client, if you had a good relationship, I think it's also a really good idea to talk about the other services that you offer. If you're only service is logo design, that's fine. You can talk about maybe supporting them in the implementation or asking simply for a referral. But sometimes we offer more services like illustration or branding or web design and your client might not be aware that that's something that you offer. By simply having a hand-off package where they can access all of the designs and they get a thank you and they can see all of the work that you could do in the future. That's a great way to continue that relationship and build your business. Lastly, some clients might want to pay you for actually helping with the implementation. Perhaps they don't have time to run their social media and they would like you to implement, let's say the new logo on the different applications, maybe talking to a printer about putting it on a car or other applications that they might need. The goal with a good hand-off is to make sure that your client feel super excited and super comfortable. Start using logo so that you can build up brand awareness over time. 8. Last thoughts: [MUSIC] Thank you so much for watching the Skillshare class. I hope you've learned something and that you feel excited about creating logos, that you feel comfortable, that you can add value to your client's businesses, and that you feel comfortable charging your worth. Don't forget to upload your class project with a new logo presented on a beautiful mockup. I'm really excited to be talking with you in the discussion, so if you have any questions at all, please just let me know in the discussions in the class projects and that will help you out. Thank you so much for watching and good luck with your projects.