The Logo Process Part 5: Concept Development
Posted: March 2nd, 2010 | Author: anthony | Filed under: Logo Articles, The Logo Process | No Comments »This is the 5th article in the series: The Logo Process. This article goes in-depth about choosing potential concepts from your sketches to having one or more developed and presentable concepts.
Defining a Concept and the Goals of Concept Development
A concept is one idea and any elements that are apart of that idea. Variations are the different approaches of a concept. In logo design one concept is usually very different from another concept. The goal of the concept phase is to narrow down your ideas from sketches and refine, develop, and expand upon those ideas in vector format.
Choosing Potential Concepts
Once you have done a fair amount of sketching and you have many ideas on paper you want to narrow down those ideas and refine them using vector software. You can’t choose all of your sketches, your goal should be to choose three good solid potential concepts to work on.
However, if you can’t meet the count of three you can reduce or add to the number of potential concepts depending on how well they fit with the following criteria. Aim for three but adjust accordingly.
Questions to Ask When Choosing Potential Concepts
- How well does this concept represent the company and its goals
- Is this concept similar to other logos within and out of the industry
- Does this concept convey the proper attributes and traits about the company
- Is the design too complex
- Is the design too simple
- Is the design following trends
The reason you want to ask yourself these questions is so you can properly narrow down your many sketches into a few that accurately fit the goals of the design brief while also ensuring that your design is unique among other logos within the industry.
It is also important to determine whether or not a design is too complicated or too simple. Remember in logo design the goal is to have a design as simple as possible without compromising the goals of the logo set out in the design brief.
Is your logo following the trends or is it setting the trends. You need to decide whether you should follow the trends or be original.
If you have trouble choosing three concepts, start by choosing five or more and then keep repeating the questioning process until you narrow your choices down to just three or so.
Moving Into Illustrator
This is the time for refinement not discovery. At this point you should have three or so good potential designs that are ready to get the proper treatment and refinement they deserve.
The software you want to be using is Adobe Illustrator. The reason why Illustrator is the software of choice is for its ability to properly create, manipulate, and save images as vector format.
Vector format is a must for logo design as it allows for a logo to be scaled and applied to any medium.
Scan or Redraw?
Depending on the complexity of your design a good idea is to just scan your sketch and use it as a template in illustrator and then just trace over it. If it is a symmetrical design just draw half and flip it. This saves time and ensures symmetry.
If it is a simple design composed of basic shapes and elements it may be better to just redraw the design in Illustrator from scratch, using your sketch as a reference.
Experimenting with Typefaces
Type Modifications in Illustrator
Unless you work at a type foundry, hand drawing type during the sketching process is a tedious task. From experience I like to work with type in Illustrator.
There are two approaches of working with your type. One method involves just modifying your chosen typeface right in Illustrator.
Another method which works good for greater experimenting is to choose a typeface that you want to work with and then print out the text at a reasonable size. Once you do this use a fine point sharpie and do your text modifications on paper.
This enables you to work quickly and experiment more freely without taking up a lot of time. Once you finalize what you want to do with your type apply the same changes in Illustrator.
Developing Your Concepts
When developing a concept the things you want to pay attention to are:
Scale and Balance: Is the design unbalanced at all? Are some elements too big or too small?
Alignment and Angles: When working with a concept it is good practice to work within some guide structure that ensures things are aligned properly. If there are any angles in the design should the angles all be the same why or why not?
Concentrate on Alignment, Spacing and Balance
Spacing: How are elements spaced throughout the design. If elements are too close together such as points it creates visual tension that causes the eye to stay focused on it.
Also, if elements are too close together it may blend together when your design is shrunk down. You want to work towards a good balance of having enough space without compromising the integrity of the design.
Type: Keep an eye on your type as well. Look at the kerning (space between letters) and the space between words. Make sure everything is spaced correctly.
Consider things such as font weight, serif or san-serif etc.
Black and White Only
You may have noticed that I have left out color in this article. When developing concepts you want to work in black and white. The reason behind this is that your attention is focused on the elements of the design itself rather than the distraction of color.
Black and white also enables you to ensure that the concept works properly in black and white or in a single color.
Color is a whole separate step which will be covered in another article in this series.
Take a Break
After working on your concepts for a while it is important to take a break for an extended period of time. The reason being is that the human brain attempts to fix errors for you the more you look at a design. You may be the best designer on the planet but the chances are you may even miss some mistakes.
Take a break and come back to the concepts with a fresh look. You will be amazed at the errors that seem obvious when looking at it now but were missed prior to giving your mind a rest.
The Shrink Test
Don’t forget to view your concepts at a small size. Is the design still readable? Does the logo perform just as well small as it does big? Adjust accordingly.
Reflect
After you have developed your concepts you want to sit back and reflect upon them. Clear away any clutter or unused elements and items in the design. Hide the grid and guides if using them. Space out your concepts to avoid distractions from each of them.
Sit, reflect and ask yourself the same questions as stated above:
- How well does this concept represent the company and its goals
- Is this concept similar to other logos within and out of the industry
- Does this concept convey the proper attributes and traits about the company
- Is the design too complex
- Is the design too simple
- Is the design following trends
If you answered the questions according and truthfully you either have a few completed concepts ready for presentation or you need to rework the concepts and refine them further until you do have completed concepts.
Reflect
In the next article we will look like how to properly present your first round of concepts to a client.
Related Posts:
- The Logo Process Part 7: Color Development
- The Logo Process Part 4: Brainstorm and Sketching
- Logo Design Process
- The Logo Process Part 1: Gathering Information
- The Logo Process: The Complete Guide
- The Logo Process Part 6: Presenting Concepts
- The Logo Process Part 8: Finalization
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