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Essential Conversations to Have Before Designing a Logo

Essential Conversations to Have Before Designing a Logo

When designing a logo, it’s easy to think of how you would do it, bringing together colors and shapes to create a brilliant finished product. But when you are working with clients, for better or for worse, it shouldn’t work like that. A logo design or redesign isn’t about your vision and what you consider to be effective, it’s about the client – the brand you’re working to create.

With this in mind, it’s critical to have a strong understanding of the client’s expectations and how they see their logo turning out long before you start putting design elements together or even sketch a prototype. This requires conversation and an understanding of the client’s goals for their business. Below are a few questions to ask before you get to work.

What’s Their Message?

A logo isn’t something that just looks nice on the page; it’s an integral aspect of brand messaging that has the potential to share a story or to impart something important about the company. You should take the time to find out the answers to these questions:

  • What sets your client apart from their competition?
  • What matters to the business owner: referenced in mission, vision, and value statements?
  • What advantages they have to offer in their space?
  • What accomplishments make them stand out?
  • What kind of clients do they serve?

Coming to the conversation with a strong understanding of the client’s business and unique selling proposition will impress your client and lend the client a sense of trust — before you ever start a prototype. They are aware that their brand message is in your hands; you should do everything in your power to make them comfortable with that idea.

HydroWorx logo

HydroWorx, a therapy pool retailer, had a specific message to share. Lots of companies sell underwater treadmills, but only HydroWorx can say that they cater to clients like Olympic silver medalist runner Galen Rupp. With this in mind, they created a logo that both brings to mind the shape of a therapy pool and demonstrates how their products stand out from the rest. The monochromatic color scheme imparts the calming, effective healing powers of water. The logo designer behind the project understood the company’s mission and worked their message right into the logo.

What Do They Want?

Yes, some clients may approach you with a "I have no idea what I’m looking for, you tell me, you’re the expert" mentality. This attitude can be really easy to work with if it’s actually the case — but in my experience, it’s usually not. Either they are at a loss for how to describe what they want, are unsure of themselves (after all, they’re not a designer), or don’t want to sound picky. It’s important that if this is the case, which it often is, you figure it out. If they have certain expectations, you’ll be saving a lot of time and frustration if you get to the bottom of those specifics from the start.

Is the client looking for a text-only logo or an iconic mark? If they prefer a combination, where should the emphasis lie? What colors are important to them, and what meaning is behind those colors? What feel are they going for: timeless and conservative, or hip and modern?

By understanding what the customer is looking for, you’ll end up with a better final product. Let’s take a look at two examples.

Pour My Beer logo design

Pour My Beer sells self-serve taps for bars. In their logo, they wanted to push what they do best — serving beer — but they also wanted to get a subtle implication of the technological advancement of their products and throw in a website mention. If you look closely, the beer is made up of an iPad. It’s a nice combination of text and icon as well as being playful and modern.

SpanTran logo design

SpanTran conducts foreign academic evaluations, and many of their clients are schools and well-known businesses. To make it with this audience they needed to portray a sense trust, structure, and authority, very different from Pour My Beer’s audience. Their logo emphasizes the authoritativeness of their small caps text and further pushes it by encircling it in two rings. The overlapping rings bring to mind the overlap of language and the power of communication.

If your client is still having a hard time explaining what they are looking for, it can be helpful to use examples to steer them in one direction or another. This is where creating a logo folder, binder or online database could be helpful. Ask your client to point out examples of logos they find appealing and those they have strong negative feelings about.

Once you have a set of likes and dislikes, you can start to look for similarities:

  • Is there a certain text-to-graphic ratio that seems to appeal to them?
  • Do they only like logos with sans-serif fonts?
  • Maybe a color that shows up in every logo they dislike?

Apply what you learn from their opinion of other logos to your design.

What Don’t They Want?

Even if you think a customer should go with a totally outside of the box logo, they may have limits and constraints that simply will not allow for it. The client might have an existing logo that can only be modified to a certain extent or a brand font that must be used in all marketing collaterals. It’s your job to find out. It will also prevent an awkward “I wish this would have stayed in the design” or “Oh, I didn’t know you would change this…” conversation after you’ve put in hours of work. The fewer revisions, the happier everyone will be.

Determine the Target Demographic

In some places, design and marketing overlap; figuring out the target demographic is one of them. Each target market finds something different appealing, young women may find something to be appealing that 75-year-old men would find distasteful. Something for a young child may seem strange to a professional woman in the workplace.

Ask questions relating to your client’s ideal customer base; what appeals to this group? What is their financial background? How educated are they? Then, start researching. Find out what would be most effective in reaching a target demographic and go from there. A recent study by Ad Age found that everything, even color preference, is determined by certain demographic standings. A little research up front can go a long way later on.

Two examples

Ocean City NJ Logo Design

Ocean City, NJ is a fun beachside town that is perhaps a little less-known than the Maryland town of the same name. Wanting to promote the town as a fun and safe place to take your kids on vacation, the town redesigned their website and branding to make it more colorful. The logo contains elements of sunshine and waves, and the cartoony flip flop family and gentle graphics make it kid-friendly.

Prebiotin logo design

On the other hand, Prebiotin’s logo was designed to appeal to adults – specifically those interested in health and natural ingredients. The simple, mostly-text logo is easy for older eyes to read, while the leaves emerging from the letter i give it a subtle, friendlier feel.

Find Out Why They Want a Redesign

If a client already has a logo and is looking to refresh or entirely change it, it can be extremely insightful to figure out exactly what irks them about the old design.

  • Is there a new mission or vision at work?
  • Have the company’s service offerings changed or shifted?
  • Are they looking to send a new message?
  • Do they want to appeal to a different demographic?
  • Is something critical missing from the branding?
  • Have they started to feel outdated?

Something must be off to undergo a new logo design; it’s your responsibility to determine exactly what that may be.

Drayer Logo Design

Drayer Physical Therapy Institute felt that their old logo was too busy, and the amount of text and graphic details were drawing attention away from the most important aspect of the logo – their name! After discovering this, the designer emphasized the company name above all else, and devoted less real estate and detail to the mark and subscript. They also modernized the logo by using less colors and sans-serif fonts, giving it a more active feel – appropriate for a physical therapist.

If you’re not asking the right questions, your final product will be found lacking. Take the time to invest in client conversation from the start; find out all the information you could possibly need and more before getting started or even coming up with a prototype. You will find that the number of revisions you end up doing drops dramatically when you focus on these details.

Premade logos

On the other hand, if you're designing a logo for personal use and you aren't working with a client, sometimes all you need is a quick premade logo to get you started. This especially rings true if you're looking to launch something quickly for your personal brand. Medialoot offers several editable Logo Mockup resources as outlined below.

Retro Insignia Logos - Pack 1
1 Retro Insignia Logos - Pack 1

Retro Insignia Logos - Pack 1

This pack contains 4 premium quality vintage monochromatic insignia style logos can be used for personal branding, stamps, badges, posters and much more. Each design only used free fonts, and is fully scalable/easy to edit in vector apps.

View Premium Resource >
LoopCloud - Logo Template
2 LoopCloud - Logo Template

LoopCloud - Logo Template

This logo template is suitable for any cloud-based or sound loops business. Included are easy to edit vector source files in a range two preset colors and black and white.

View Premium Resource >
PlayMedia - Logo Template
3 PlayMedia - Logo Template

PlayMedia - Logo Template

This logo template is suitable for any Multimedia or Entertainment related company. Included are easy to edit vector source files in a range of preset colors and grayscale.

View Premium Resource >

What questions do you ask before starting work on a new or updated logo for a client? Are there any you would add to the list? Comment below!


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