The (Seemingly Never Ending) Process of Designing a Logo

As a graphic designer, you’re really playing the role of graphic designer and mind reader all at the same time. Trying to decipher what a client really wants can be tricky. And logos might be the worst culprit.

Often when I send design projects for review, I receive a nicer version of “We don’t really know what we want, but we know it isn’t that”.

Even though they can end up being pretty tedious and time consuming, logo design projects are my absolute favorite.

Being able to start from scratch on color scheme and font feels so freeing after following client brand guidelines for months. I’d say that logo and branding development is where I get to be the most creative in my work.

For me, I’ve found that the best way to end up with a winning logo design is to create a bunch of different ideas. And I mean a bunch. I’d say on average I create about 15 different design options for each logo project I work on. I’ll sit at my computer and create a handful of options, take a break, come back and create a few more. Until I have a list of multiple options that I’m proud of.

The graphic at the top of this blog post illustrates the variety of options I usually come up with as well as the multiple renditions that a design typically goes through even after I’ve already narrowed it down to my top pick.

This time it wasn’t even a client that was giving me multiple rounds of edits… it was Matt! Ultimately he had to call me and say, “So I don’t think I’m making myself clear in my emails…” But things like that happen all the time when it comes to graphic design projects! And perfectly illustrates what I mean about mind reading while designing.

So, next time you see a logo you really like or that matches a brand’s personality perfectly, give it a little extra appreciation. You don’t know how many painstaking hours might have gone into its creation!

And P.S. don’t forget to check in on your graphic designer friends. They might need it.