Dec 15 2008
In Part 2 of this series I went into the sketching phase for the WILLCO logo. Here I go into concept exploration and presentation (phase 3).
## Concept Exploration
After feeling comfortable with the sketches, I made a note of which seemed to have the most potential to be turned into a good logo. Using them as starting points, it's in this phase that concepts begin to really develop, and that takes place on the computer.
The point here is to not simply take a sketch and "clean it up" on the computer. Once a sketched version of the logo has been created on the computer, it needs to be finessed and pushed and pulled for a number of reasons, including readability, legibility, feeling (bold versus fun, for instance), appropriateness, weight, balance, etc. Often, I'll find that just playing with the individual letterforms during this process leads to new ideas, which then sometimes work, sometimes don't. It's important to note here that these concepts are not ever, ever shown to the client. (Same for sketching.) The reason is because this is still exploratory. Presenting this to anyone at this stage would cause a myriad of problems and confusion. There's just too much to choose from at this point. And to be perfectly honest, as a designer, there will be things that I know in my gut and just by looking and playing with the logo that I know will not work or simply won't work well. No, it's better to leave the narrowing down to the designer / design team.
Presented Concepts
From the various concepts explored, they get whittled down to 3. It's important to know that while we narrowed the options down to 3, this isn't what we always do for every logo project. Sometimes it's 2, sometimes it's one. It's all based on the info we get up front before we even begin brainstorming. As David Airey puts it,
As a designer, it’s important to focus my efforts on the solution that I believe is right for your business. There’s one correct solution, as opposed to five, and with a detailed design brief and the right amount of research / brainstorming / sketches, I can find it.
This is absolutely true and that's why we limit our concepts to under 3. For WILLCO, here's what we presented:
These range in slick and modern to more traditional. The point was to create a bold enough logo with each but use different typefaces to give them different styles. From here, the ball is in the client's court to live with the logos for a while and get feedback back to us.
Next up: Review and Revisions
Stay tuned for the next installment of this series, which will go over client feedback and our revisions to the logo.