Over the past few years, we have helped many clients, from start-up ventures to organizations rich with history, define an identity for their company. We follow a branding process that allows us to delve into the internal culture of a company, gleaning information about the product/service, competition, target market and geo-political factors that influence the brand as a whole. Once we have fully immersed ourselves, gathered responses to design-related questions and uncovered the inspiration both hidden and pronounced we craft a creative brief.
The creative brief is a synopsis of the company story discovered during the research phase. If approved by the client, it becomes the guideline and the written mood board for our design team. If not approved, it is revised until the verbiage accurately portrays the desires of the client and the needs of the company. The creative team digests the information and renders designs that appropriately convey the written word.
Once we have designed a few marks that we believe best capture the essence of the research and the creative brief, we present the designs to the client. After the designs are presented, our orderly design process, no matter the client, begins to devolve. Now, it has very little to do with the size of the client or our designs. Instead, it has everything to do with a near compulsive need to find what we refer to as logo love.
The quest for logo love can be a simple short-lived jaunt or a debilitating marathon. Some clients may instantly find amore with one of the designs we present, while others find the passion after several revisions to a chosen direction. Yet, there are still those who plow through upwards of 10 rounds of revisions and still can’t find that loving feeling.
Those who fall in logo love at first sight are a rare-breed. These clients tend to have a very clear vision from the word “go”, have a creative streak and have a clientele or peer group that shares a similar affinity for a particular design aesthetic.
Clients who require a few revisions tend to be the norm. These decision-makers have an instant idea of what they like and what they don’t like as soon as they lay eyes on their designs. There are usually a few elements of a couple marks that they are drawn to and request to see a combination of logo “A” and logo “B”. This hybrid logo will then go through a few slight tweaks, but sooner rather than later, the client will get the warm fuzzies for their mark.
Those decision makers who can barely find even a warm or a fuzzy feeling for a logo are sadly not as rare as us creative types would like. These clients either have too many great ideas or at a complete loss. They tend to fixate on small aspects to the detriment of the bigger picture and often experience logo lethargy where they become so overwhelmed by logo designs that they shut down, rendering themselves virtually incapable of making a decision or finding love.
Our best suggestion for the love lost Romeos is to take a step back, remove the excess designs and return to a simpler place. It’s also advisable to stop listening to the peanut gallery that has assembled, instead do some introspection of the company and the target market. I hate to burst the bubble, but logo love may never come, but logo ‘like’ will certainly arrive.
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