Wolf’s Little Store

I made my first logo for a client today. I have been working as a designer for over one and a half year and never made a logo in that time. I believe my workflow could use some improvements, so I’m posting it here for myself and others. Internet analysis.

Day one

Talked to the company owners and got to know what they do, what they offer, how they’re going to stay alive as a company, what they intend to do [in the future], how they want to market themselves. Noted down three pages of intel.

Started sketching in my notebook. Jotted down keywords, thoughts, ideas. Wrote the company name down in big, big letters. Started sketching out some logos. Got stuck. Started work on something else.

Day one (evening)

Did some fast sketching on post-its. Made 5 sketch versions. Wasn’t happy with any of them. Imagination started to run wild. Mentioned to my roommate that I might need some drugs if I wanted to make a good logo. She replied: “We all know that that doesn’t help.”

Day one (later in the evening)

In the bar. Alone. Bored. Friends were running late. Asked barmaid for pencil. Started sketching again. Still nothing halfway decent. Friends arrived. Forgot about work. Won Trivial Pursuit six to two.

Day two

Information overload. Went to Logopond, Veer, iStockphoto (can’t believe the amount of crap on iStock), found logo books in our company library. Frantically skipped through the pages, hoping to pick up some good stuff. Alternated between sketching and looking through logo and type books.

Launched Photoshop. Dumped all the stuff I found (on Veer esp.) in a file. Combined some illustrations with type. Came up with a few concepts. Decided that Veer is freakingly expensive and the company has a tight budget. Denied myself a purchase of the Gotham font for the same reason. One day I will bill a company for the entire Hoefler & Frere-Jones font library.

Thew away half of the concepts. What was left on my screen was bland, boring. Slightly panicky. Smoked a cigarette and thought deeply. Back to the library.

Found a logo concept in a book that I liked and that fit the company. Took a picture of it with my trusty phone for later reference. Copying the whole concept would be ultra-lame, so remembered one element: a face that can be seen in two diffent ways (cfr. the classic Young woman/Witch).

Started drawing the logo in Illustrator. Finally, the genius a-ha moment. Something I like, something that fits the company, and something that references what they do in the form of a non-complex illustration. Sweet!

Made a printout and asked for feedback. Good suggestions from Dirk. Encouraged me to keep going.

Made some adjustments based on the suggestions; printed everything out again. Made some variations but decided to stick with a better aligned version of the original. Started trying different fonts to go with it.

Decided upon the font. First version of the logo finished. I’ll never call this easy anymore, I promise.

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