Designing Logos for Clients : An Extensive Guide

1. Course Trailer: Welcome to the course, designing logos for clients and extensive gray. Let's have a look at the topics included as part of the course. The first two topics talk about what are typical design contract would consist of like all the terms and conditions and info about the project scope and timeline. Then we'll have a look at the importance of asking the right questions to the client and how it'll help you out as a designer. Next, we'll have a look at how to formulate a design brief based on all the information gathered from the client. After that, we'll have a look at what our typical logo design process looks like, along with an in-depth look at each of the stages, like research, brainstorming and sketching and digitizing. Then we'll end the course with a lesson on how to deliver the final logo files to your client. Let's move on to the very first topic, which is contract terms and conditions. 2. Contract: Terms & Conditions: Now we'll have a look at the different terms and conditions that are supposed to be included in a typical Design Contract. So prior to beginning any project, it's always a good idea to set out a contract or something similar. The contract is essentially a written legal agreement between the client and the service provider which, in our case, is the designer. And such an agreement is very important for a designer because of a few reasons. The first one being, it sets out clear expectations for the client. So it'll help the client know what to expect at the end of the project. And it helps the designer get out of the professional relationship in case things go bad. Which maybe, If the client and the designer do not agree on a few things, or there's some bad kind of cooperation and stuff. A contract would generally address those aspects as well. And it also ensures prompt payment of the services provider. So the client cannot go without providing all the, you know, without paying for all the services that are provided. It also increases clients' confidence in your ability to design. Because of a contract, if you are a designer and you have a contact, it makes the client feel that the designer is quite professional and has been established in the industry for a long time. So one of the first things to be included in a contract is the payment terms. Setting on the payment terms with utmost clarity could be considered as one of the most important elements of an agreement. This action helps to filter out the better clients from the bad ones. The bad ones being the clients who might try to exploit your services by avoiding the payment for all the provider services. So in this payment term section, you could also define all the different payment methods that you can employ. For example, you could ask for 50 percent upfront payment from the client before you begin the project. Rest of the 50 percent, after you complete the project. There could be another way where you would charge 33 percent upfront amount before you begin the project and 33 percent after you as a designer, achieve a certain milestone within the project, which is set by you, of course. And the rest of the 33 percent after you complete the project. Apart from the payment methods and modes of payment, there are some other essential sections of information that needs to be incorporated in the design contract. The first one being copyright ownership or intellectual property ownership. So in this section, you can mention that you're granting the client full ownership of the design after the completion of the project, but no permission for the client to modify it in any way. And this is the section where you would also include that you'd still be permitted to display the work in your portfolio because you are the one who's creating it, unless the client makes you sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement, in which case you wouldn't be able to display it as a work that you've done because of confidentiality. And there's also a clause called the termination clause. This section defines the parameters of termination and the amount to be paid in case of termination, whether it's the client who terminates the project, or it's you, the designer. You will also include information about the ownership and copyright in case of termination. That comes in very handy, especially when there's a lot of disagreement between the client and the designer. Now, let's have a look at the project scope and project timeline sections in the contract. 3. Contract: Scope & Timeline: Let's have a look at the project scope and timeline sections of the design contract. Project scope. This is the section where the designer would list all the deliverables that were agreed upon as part of the service. The designer might also specify the cost pertaining to each of the services provided. Just like the example below, wherein you would include all the different types of services that were agreed upon along with their service cost as well. So this ensures that there's no disagreement or there's no misunderstanding between the client and the designer in terms of the services provided. The next section is the project timeline. It's always a good idea to set out clear expectations for the client in terms of important dates and deadlines. Project timeline is particularly very helpful for the designer as it creates few mini deadlines for each stage and helps you as a designer to get a much effective result. Moreover, including this in your contract would make you look much more serious and professional. Like, for example, in this particular timeline that I've shown here, it was actually a two-week project wherein different stages were included and the sections were blocked out with respect to how long each stage would take place. So it's always a good idea to have a project timeline included as well. Now let's have a look at how important asking the right questions is while we are getting to know the client's company or the products or the services. 4. Asking the Right Questions: As a designer, It's always essential to ask questions in order to perfectly understand the client's needs, their brand, and their target audience, it is very important to ask the right questions. We'll have a look at some of the questions that I personally would suggest you ask your clients. And also we'll have a look at why should we ask those particular questions and how they might help us, as designers, to know more about the client's business. The first question is, how do you describe your brand's products or services? As a logo designer, it's very essential for you to understand the brand's products or services and their ideology. It helps you to decide on the design direction that you would want to follow. And it's quite important for you while exploring different ideas for the logo, to begin with. The next question is, how long has your company been in the industry? In case of an established brand, it is more likely to have a logo already, which needs to be redesigned by you. So in this case, as a logo designer, you'll have to make sure that the previous logo's perception and the value that it had already created in their current customers' minds are not lost in your redesigning process. The third question is, what do you want your logo to accomplish and what message to convey? This question will help you understand the client's idea, as well as, help you decide whether the idea is appropriate for that brand and whether it's a good idea to include it in the logo design. Because you know, the clients usually have an idea of their own before they approach you So, this could be a way where you could sort of bring the client and bring yourself to a certain middle ground where you are actually providing a solution which the client would definitely like. And the next question is, what will your logo be primarily used for? While most bands use a mix of digital media and print media as part of their brand strategy and marketing materials. There are few which primarily use only one of them. And depending on whether they use digital or print or both, the logo files that you will deliver to the clients would vary. The next question that I would suggest you ask is, Do the clients like any specific logos? Everybody is exposed to a plethora of logo designs every single day and, in a way, prefers a certain type of logo over the other. The question, this particular question helps you as a designer to understand exactly that preference of the client. And it's always a good idea to include at least one logo design with this particular preference in mind, among all the different options that you would provide your client with. The next question is, who are your main competitors? Every brand would generally have competitors which are essentially the brands that are already present in that particular industry. They're already established in that particular industry, Some doing much better than others in terms of revenue. So this question will help you to get to know the position of the client's brand and the different players that are already present in the industry that they need to stand on top of. The next question is, what's the main age range of your target customer base? The design of the logo is highly governed by the target audience or the target demographics of the brand and its products or services. Elements of the logo like color, the type, face, the shape, and the overall look and feel of the logo are highly dependent on the age group of the customers as well. The next question would be, do you have any colored preferences? Are existing brand colors? As a logo designer, If you find the client says preferences or the preferred colors to be appropriate for the brand and the industry, you might embrace those preferences. Or else you might suggest the newer ones which are much more relevant from your point of view. Because you as a designer would know, would have much better knowledge when compare it to the client. The next question is, Do you have a slogan, tagline or moto? Does it need to be incorporated into the logo? Generally, the brands have a certain slogan or a tagline. So it's always a good idea to know about those slogans or taglines that the brand believes in. And it's always a good idea to also ask the client whether they want the logo to include that particular slogan or not. The last question that I personally ask is what brands Inspire you? Are there any brands that you dislike? So when you dive a little deeper into the response received from the client under this particular question, you might realize the client's preferences, not necessarily just in terms of the logo designs, but also in the way that these brands communicate or do their marketing. So after asking these questions, the information that you gather from the client would help you formulate or create a design brief for your project, for you to begin the project. 5. Creating the Brief: All the questions that you've asked help you to formulate a design brief for yourself. And this particular brief acts as a quick reference for you to come back to at every different stage of the design process. For example, this particular grief that I've created is for a brand called AK jewelers, which is a jewelry brand. And this is a brand that I'd be working on throughout this course while showing different stages of the design process. So this is how you might create a basic design brief which could help you out throughout the process. Now let's have a look at the logo design process. And the stages that are included as part of that process. 6. Logo Design Process (Intro): Let's talk about the logo design process. So the example here is of a logo design process, a basic one, for starters. You might change it as per your own preferences or as per your own style of working. But this is a general process that one might follow, especially if you're a beginner. So generally, the process begins with the client brief or the design brief that you create, after asking questions to the client and gathering information from them. Then comes the first stage, which is the Research stage. This is the first step where you study about the industry of the client's business and their competitors and create user personas or make an analysis of all the gathered information. The second stage is the Brainstorm stage, where you start brainstorming different ideas and mind-mapping every possible name or idea or attribute or anything that's.. that forms a starting point for your design project. The next stage is the Sketch phase. After brainstorming, the next step is to sketch out all the possible explorations of the design, before moving on to designing it digitally, the next step is the Design stage where, you know, this is what brings the best sketches to life. This involves the use of vector-based design software like Adobe Illustrator or many other alternatives that we'll have a look into it in a future lesson. And all this leads to the final delivery stage where you provide all the final logo files or any other relevant files to the client. Now let's have a deep dive into each of the stages that we've discussed just now. Beginning with Stage 1: Research. 7. Stage 1: Research: Stage 1: Research. Before diving right away into any design project, it's always best to conduct research and gain as much information as possible. This is the stage where you as a designer would perform the following tasks. Like research about the brand's industry and its products or services. For you to get to know more about the client's brand. Gather information about their competitors and their target audience. Create a mood board for establishing a starting point for your process. And gather inspiration from existing logo and brand designs that are relevant to the industry that the brand belongs to. Some of the useful websites and tools for this stage, are Google, Pinterest, Instagram, Behance, Dribble. Or in case of mood board. You'll have to use any text editor, or collage maker. And there's one tool, one particular tool called Milanote, which is getting quite famous in the industry right now. And also you could use Google Docs and Google Slides, which are free and quite user-friendly as well. We had mentioned something called a mood board. A mood board is a collection of visual elements that help develop a certain style, idea or concept. This is particularly used by creative professionals like designers, illustrators, photographers, filmmakers to set out a certain mood or the feel for pursuing a certain idea or design direction. This is something that becomes the starting point for your design. The mood board for a logo design, or brand design project would typically consist of design inspirations, photographs, color schemes, and fonts. This collection is a mood board for the brand that I'm working on, which is called AK Jewellers. So here is a collection of different elements, different design elements, different foils, different textures, different colors, And all the various architectural examples or jewelry, examples of fabrics and forms. And all in all, the things that make me have a clear direction for me to begin my design process. The next step would be Brainstorming. 8. Stage 2: Brainstorming: Stage 2: Brainstorming. This post research stage is where you would list relevant keywords or mind-map different ideas and explore naming for the brand. (That is, if it doesn't have a name already.) This particular stage is encountered before actually moving on to sketching out actual logo design concepts. This example that you're seeing here. All this is just a casual brain drain of all the ideas that I felt are relevant to the brand. So these are all the ideas that came to my mind. These are all the keywords that that came to my mind while I was working on this particular design project. So after figuring out, after creating the mindmaps of all the ideas, these would fall as a foundation for my logo sketch explorations. 9. Stage 3: Sketching: Stage 3: Sketching. This stage is where we would use traditional tools like pen, pencil, brushes, papers, etc., to let out our creativity flow much more freely without any constraints and any technological limitations per se. These sketches act as foundations for refining and finalizing potential logo designs for the brand. So these are the sketches that I worked on after brainstorming and creating mindmaps about all the ideas that I initially had. Based on those, I started out exploring different logo sketches. And some of these, a few of the good ones or the ones having the highest potential would move on to the next stage, which is Digitizing. 10. Stage 4: Digitizing: Stage 4: Digitizing, or we could also call it the Design stage. The next stage in the process is where we digitize the logo using a vector-based graphic design software. Or in short, this is the stage where we vectorize the logo. Though Adobe Illustrator is considered to be the industry standard for logo design, there are various other alternatives as well, like Sketch, CorelDRAW, Affinity Designer, Inkscape, and DesignEvo. This is how I digitized and explored the different logo designs for AK Jewellery after having an extensive brainstorming and sketching sessions. The end result of this stage is the final logo design. Or in most of the cases, logo design concepts, which when presented to the client, will yield into the final logo design. The next steps after digitizing the sketches are finalizing on the best concepts, Presenting those very concepts to the clients, along with mock-ups of various applications. Some of the websites that provide amazing collections of mockups are Envato Elements, Creative Market, and Yellow Images. These are the websites from where you would have to buy the mockups. And sites like Freepik, Graphic Burger and Mockup-World are some websites where you could find a lot of free mock-ups as well. The next step would be receiving feedback from the clients and then refining the selected concepts in order to reach out to the final logo design for the brand. 11. Final Delivery: Now let's have a look at how to deliver the final logo designs to the client. Depending on whether the brand uses Digital or, Print or both for their marketing material or communication material, The logo files that you are delivered to the client would vary. As a general rule. In case of digital media. That is, if the brand is highly dependent on social media, website or app, the files are created in RGB color mode and are delivered in JPEG, PNG and SVG file formats. In case of print media like business cards, brochures and magazines, the files are created in CMYK color mode and are delivered in PDF, EPS and SVG file formats. As a general tip, It's always a good idea to deliver all these different files to the client as a compressed folder with perfectly organized subfolders along with usage guidelines. To help you out, in this particular final delivery stage. I have shared an amazing resource in the class resources section, particularly dedicated to the final delivery stage. Do check it out! 12. Class Project: Now that we are at the end of this course, here's a design brief that you could work on as part of the class project. You may select the same brand that I had worked on throughout the course. Or you may go ahead with this particular brand and this particular design brief. So, don't forget to share your amazing works in the class project section of this course. I'd definitely love to see your creativity and the thinking process that went behind each of your designs. Follow me here to stay up-to-date on all the new course releases and do check out the amazing and hopefully very helpful resources that I have shared as part of this course. They would definitely help you out in all your future freelance projects. Do keep exploring the platform (Skillshare), check out some amazing courses and thanks a lot for being a wonderful student... Happy learning!