So, you want to be a logo designer?

Have you ever wondered how a logo is designed? Most people only see the finished project of logo design -- not the many steps in between. When a house is being built you see it start as little more than a hole in the ground. Over time it is transformed into a place where people eat, sleep, and live.

At Snap Logos we take each of our customers through the steps of logo design. They get to describe to us how they envision their logo. Is is vibrant and colorful or sharp and professional? Is it casual or IN YOUR FACE? Once our designers understand what the customer desires we translate it into multiple rough prototypes.

The first step is to look at the main text of the logo. How does this fit together? How can we make it express the idea visually and make sure it visually pleasing? You may notice that many big companies don't have elaborate logos. Take IBM's logo for example. Or Microsoft's. Even Amazon.com's logo is visually simple. Yet that does not mean that their CEO opened up Microsoft Paint and had a logo in 45 minutes.

I have chosen to make a logo for the words "Logo Design." How convenient! Very simple, two word phrase. Now I open this in a vector graphics program. The most commonly used vector program is Adobe Illustrator -- however there are several Open Source and freeware vector programs. It is much easier to create prototype a logo with vector-based graphics software. In many cases this will be the only program the designer will use.

Now the designer changes and moves the text around. This stage can go on for a long time, or a short time, depending how the designer thinks. This is really the most creative step. This is where the "design" part happens. It is important for the logo designer to get as many different concepts out whether he likes them or not. At Snap Logos we immediately e-mail the concepts to a customer after we create approximately 5 logo designs. This gives the customer a change to say "hey I like this design, but not this element." Doing this allows the customer to be an active participant all the way through the design process.

Notice that we only use black, white, and grays at this stage? You can use colors in the prototyping stage -- sometimes we do. However this is not necessary.

Once we learn what design or designs the customer likes best we proceed to the next step -- finalizing the actual logo design. The word final is a bit misleading here because if the customer wants the logo design for a website there is still a few more steps.

It turns out our customer liked this logo design the best! After receiving feedback from the customer its back to work for the logo designer. We choose the color scheme because the customer wants to use this logo for a website with a blue and orange color scheme (quite popular these days)

Next the logo is sent to our favorite pixel graphics program. Popular choices include Photoshop and The Gimp. If a logo is intended for print use only we will leave it in vector form or create a very high-quality pixel image at 300 dots per inch resolution.

There, we are finished! That is a very simple example. During a usual logo design project our customer will usually request that an illustration is used. Take a look at our logo design portfolio for illustration examples.

So now you have an understanding of just what occurs during the logo design process. This can take anywhere from 24 hours to several days depending on a customers needs. Think you can do it? Some of things you will need to be proficient in: design (a few classes and books can help you get there), illustration (a lot of classes and years of experience), proficiency in multiple graphics programs (once again, a few classes and books), and an ability to understand a customer's needs and meet them (no class can teach that.)