“Logo design is easy”

🦙This is a true story.

But JUST SO WE’RE CLEAR, this NEVER happens.

My logo for Metalama (which has won 6 awards now) was signed off, first go. And yes, I did just one sketch.

Sometimes, you just get lucky and a unicorn design comes to you straight away. But this was only possible because I had a couple of things in place before I started the job.

1. A great brief and a ‘success statement’ This is where you and your client sit and talk, and LISTEN to one another. You then work together to come up with a short paragraph that determines what a ‘home run’ looks like for this project.
2. 4-5 brand nounsI got this process from @allanpeters. The aim is to get 4 or 5 THINGS (not words) signed off before the project. That way you’re not working with a concept your client won’t like. So ‘# symbol’ and ‘llama’ were obvious choices for this project.

N.B. Don’t use words like ‘nature’ or ‘technology’, because they can be represented by almost anything. And when you send your ‘leaf’ logo over (for nature) you might find that the client didn’t want a leaf in their design, and then you’ve wasted WEEKS!

If you want to know more about this, I did a presentation at Adobe MAX 2023 called ‘Signed Off, No Amends’. And if you sign up to my newsletter you can get it for free!

Just head to barnard.co/newsletter or hit the link in my bio.

#graphicdesign #logodesign #illustratortips