Dec 08 2008
In Part 1 of this series I described our process for logo design, as well as going into the first phase, Discovery and Research using a project we're currently working on for WILLCO Painting & Construction. In this second part I'll get into the brainstorming and sketching phase.
All logo projects (all design projects, really) begin include sketching. That is, freehand drawing outside of the confines of a computer. The reason for this is just that – to get away from the computer's limits and instead let creativity flow as it comes. The computer can be really limiting as there are some things that you can do in a few seconds using a pen that take minutes on a computer. And this early in the phase, just putting the idea down on paper is more important than seeing what the idea itself is. The WILLCO logo project didn't skip this step. Even though I'm very familiar with the WILLCO brand, and knowing it would be a primarily typographic logo, it would have been a mistake to get into the project without sketching ideas. Even sketching out different types of letterforms is important. And that's just what I did.
Again, the sketching / brainstorming phase is crucial to creating a good logo. Without it, some ideas may be overlooked that can only occur when you're looking at a piece of paper rather than a screen. For WILLCO, because a requirement / request was to keep it typographical, I focused on letterforms. Not fonts, but letterforms. The difference? The shape of each letter as hand-drawn by the designer (me) vs. a pre-built font. Don't get me wrong, fonts come into play eventually, but not at the sketching phase.
There were several things that I focused on within the typographical nature of the logo that were important based on my Discovery phase conversation and research:
- The word / name "WILLCO" needed to stand on its own even though "painting & construction" would likely be with it a majority of the time.
- How the individual letters and letter pairs connect, interact and feel next to each other needed to be explored, especially given the short length of the word.
- It needed to be bold enough to make a statement without being in your face or obnoxious.
The sketches were then based off of those things. I also included variations on italic, non-italic, an enclosing shape or free-floating, etc. The point was to get as many ideas out and push the ones that seemed to work best.
Next up: Concept Exploration
In the next part I'll explain how those sketches turn into concepts which get pared down to what gets presented to a client (in this case, WILLCO).