Case study: How should we design beautiful logos?

 

　　

 

Case study: Logo Design System Method

Logo Design is very time-consuming, because it is difficult to express our design philosophy and meet customer needs. There are many elements to consider in Logo design, such as color, Font, balance, and symbolic. So how do we get started? Today, I will show you a systematic way to design your Logo, which is organized, logical, constructive, and creative.

First, you need to communicate with the customer and understand the brand they want to create. For example, your customers are stock brokerage company Petra Capital. They want to design a clean and collaborative Logo, it is hoped that the company's extremely professional image can be conveyed to the outside world through the Logo. How should we design it?

1. Investigation and Research

First of all, we need some background research to use Google to study the customer's competitors, to see how their brand is shaped, and to see what kind of design they adopt. The use of competitor cases is a good method of inspiration and heuristic, but we need to ensure that we are unique to the customer's Logo designers, so the research must be meticulous and conduct a lot of comparisons.

　　

 

Then we need to conduct some research on customers, study their business models, and study their products and their business models. Finally, I found that Petra Capital specializes in mining stocks. Petra "means" rock "in Greek ". This is a very interesting detail. I can integrate this into Logo design.

2. Come up with some ideas

Once we have completed the investigation and research, learned a lot of information, and made a preliminary impression on the work we are about to create, we can start brainstorming through a morphological matrix to create ideas. This is my secret weapon in Logo design. It is a way to effectively organize ideas and merge them to produce clear ideas. Mind Map is also a good way to help your inspiration surge like a stream.

The form matrix method is to take out a piece of white paper, and then list some elements and components of the Logo design in the column on the left. Then, you will be able to portray your creativity on every element on the right. Conceptual, symbolic, practical, and innovative, all put them on the right. The following is an image of the morphological matrix. Since the customer is a stock brokerage company, it focuses on mining stocks. I decided to add a mountain that is characterized by lines, representing both the mining industry and the stock trend. Remember that the most important part of Logo Design is identification. Therefore, we must design unique logos so that people can remember them.

　　

 

3. Select the Logo type

Now that idea is available, we should determine the type of Logo to be made. There are more than three basic Logo types: Commentary, icon, and word.

Commentary Logo

This type of Logo is generally complex and graphical, so it is not suitable for use as a company Logo, because it is too complex images to consider the display effect when the proportion is reduced, this is a model of this type of Logo.

　　

 

Icon Logo

Icon logos generally contain symbolic icons and text. This logo is usually very powerful and can help attract users to focus on text, while the use of icons presents a unique visual effect. In addition, this type of Logo is widely used, and it can also be very effective to use icons alone.

　　

 

Textual Logo

Traditional, simple, but very dependent on the font design and style, generally bold. It is generally used in conservative industries, such as finance and law.

　　

 

4. Start with a black-and-white sketch.

Finally, I chose the icon Logo, because I have made a lot of ideas before, with this type of design can be perfect performance. Now we start to draw a sketch, Which is black and white. If a Logo can be very beautiful in black and white colors, it can be kept dry in a variety of proportions, and is suitable for postcards, stamps, networks, and documents. Then it is successful. The Logo does not need special effects, light effects, or gradient to create beauty. I usually avoid those special effects and just make my Logo concise and aesthetic.

　　

 

You can use a computer or paper to draw a sketch. Be sure not to be too complicated and be different from the popular design trends so that your Logo will shine for a long time. Pay attention to the proportion of each part of the Logo. below is my concept sketch. We don't have to care too much about the details. We can add them later.

5. Font

Font selection is also an important part of Logo Design and the key to success or failure. Each font has its own uniqueness. We need to ensure that the font features are consistent with the customer's style and philosophy. Do not use too many types of fonts in Logo design, which results in very complex effects and the perception is very unbalanced. One or two fonts are enough. If you want to ensure that your font is unique, you can design one or modify it based on the existing font.

　　

 

6. determine the overall color

Color is also a very important element of the Logo in the group, because the Logo can be quickly converted to the viewer's emotion through color. Our ideas are subject to subconscious color images, so we need to use color psychology to build a logo exactly. When we select a color system, we should consider the meaning of different colors. There are many Color selection tools on the Internet, such as "Color Lovers" and "Adobe Kuler", which can help us quickly and conveniently select the Color system.

　　

 

This is the color of my choice. Black (serious, strong, classic) blue (security, strength, success) Green (money, fresh, concise)

7. Organize together

After all the elements are prepared, it is relatively simple, but complicated, and organized. Make sure that the vector graph is used so that the scaling will not lose the quality. Make sure that the overall picture is balanced; otherwise, the font is separated from the image. Let's look at your Logo from another angle to see if the effect will be worse or not? Once you check the Logo again and again, if you think it meets your aesthetic standards, save it and prepare to display it to the customer.