Understanding Client's Logo Design Idea

As professional logo designers you would often come across clients who will demand that you do exactly what they have in their mind and most of the time you would find their ideas ridiculous. There are two things that you should consider in such situations. First of all you should take client’s idea seriously. Secondly, you need to learn how to be creative in strictly limited artistic freedom


Small businesses are very conscious about their existing clientele, particularly those who are in the business for some time and have decided to finally get brand logo. Their customers already know them and have their own perception of the brand. So when a client is forcing you to draw something in a particular way, you need to understand how they think they are perceived by their clients. Then you need to discuss this so that you could come up something that is closer to how your client thinks their business should look to potential and existing customers.

Effective communication between a logo designer and the client is essential for a good logo design. However, since your clients are not graphic designers themselves, it would be difficult for them to convey their ideas to you. So you should approach them by asking them questions about what they want to be done. Specially a logo designer must understand they values of the business or brand, what are the targeted markets, how the business promotes itself and so on.

The Share Icon Project - One Icon For All Sharing

There was once a time when blogs were called weblogs, diaries and online journals. They were the coolest thing happening on the web at that time. Then came Syndication feeds, which allowed the webloggers to share their content in new different ways. Then there came a variety of feeds, like RSS, RSS 2.0, Atom and so on. So the webloggers who were then already jumped onto Blogger and Wordpress blogging platforms started serving all flavors of these feeds. To display a link to these feeds they needed icon so everyone started using different icons for different feeds.

Atom Icon	XML Icon	RSS Icon

Some used XML icon, others used RSS icon, and some used the orange icon that we see everywhere today. Until one day it was decided by web giants that we should make this icon a standard And so came the RSS icon.

These days there is a variety of websites every offering buttons that you can add on your blogs or websites and allow your site's visitors to share your content with their social networks, bookmarks and email contacts. Some websites offer fancy buttons that expand over to accommodate the dozens of social sites. Each of these websites used their own style, design, logos and icons for sharing and it became confusing to figure out how to share quickly without leaving a webpage.

There was a definite need to have something that tells the visitors that if you click on this button or take your mouse over it you will be then showed a list of sharing options that you can choose from. The purpose was to avoid confusion and make it easier for web surfers to share the information.

ShareIcon  Project, offered the solution to the problem. Alex King creator of the Share This sharing service shared the ShareThis icon with the web community to freely use as the standard sharing icon.
The icon of Share this is shown below:

However, there is another project called Open Share Icons a project run by ShareaHolic. They also suggest that there should be a common icon for sharing and they offer their own icon for this purpose. However they oppose the idea of using the ShareThis icon for the purpose. Since ShareThis icon has copyright restrictions, they suggest that a more openly licensed icon should be used for the purpose.

OpenShareIcons recognizes Alex King's efforts but they present their case in these words:

The design of the Open Share Icon is inspired by Alex King's original Share Icon - . The original Share Icon, designed with community input, driven and popularized by Alex King was later sold to ShareThis/Nextumi, Inc.

Since being acquired, that icon has been subject to take down notices by ShareThis/Nextumi, Inc, and its original intended usage restricted in practice. We, as a community, felt these actions by ShareThis/Nextumi, Inc did not reflect the original spirit with which the original share icon was created, and hence felt the need for a new, truly open, free and more flexible community-driven alternative.

I personally go for openness when it comes to technology and ShareThis icon is definitely not open. So I personally recommend using the Open Share Icons.

The Myth of Web 2.0 Logo Design

I was just reading some blogs and there someone mentioned a term Logos in Web 2.0 style. I did not understand the term so I searched further and found out that there are designers working on logo designs following the popular web 2.0 style trends.

First of all who describes what is web 2.0 style trend. I know that larger fonts and bright colors are the web 2.0 style. But when we design logos we need to make sure that these logos work on all media whether it is print or the web.

To debunk the myth of this style trend just think of a lemon green business logo with extra large Arial typeface. Such a logo would fade away from print and the type would look really ugly. So perhaps the web 2.0 style is just a myth after all it has web 2.0 in it so how it could be applied to all sort of graphic design trends.

Perhaps these colors and style could be followed if the client specifically need a logo for a web design project alone. However, as a professional it would be our obligation to inform them that such a logo won’t look good in print or television and you might need to create different versions for different media.

Logo Design Begins with Color Palette

Colors are the foundation of a good logo design. How a graphic design artist picks up a color palette? Where to look for the ideas and why use a palette? Why not just allow the instinct to take over the artistic mind and create a fiasco?

 

There are certain limitations when you are working for clients. You are creating visual images of their businesses. These are like tiny portraits of their business, their values and how they want to be seen. So it needs to be well organized, presentable and meaningful. Choosing the right color palette is the beginning of the idea. 

To pick colors you need to understand your clients business and their mission statement. Who they are? What their future plans are and what kind of people do business with them.

 

Now keeping this information in mind a Logo Design artist you should study colors. Colors not just represent the shades of light. Colors may represent wholesome ideas. Blue may represent calmness, water, sky, and peace. But, it can also represent firmness and strength. Red is supposed to represent love and passion but it can also be representing war and blood. 

Colors may also have different effects in different cultures. The effect of colors may also change in different scenarios, periods, age groups. Considering all this will help you choose your color ideas. Once you have a few colors you can add relevant colors to add contrast and shades. Too many colors might be disorienting so most artists stick to their limited color palette which simplifies the whole idea of their logo design in a coherent and meaningful manner. 

About Logo Design Blog

Hello and welcome to the Logo Design blog. Logo design blog is a place to share tips and tricks of designing corporate logos. The main topics of the blog are design practices, logo design, brand design, marketing and corporate logos. We hope you enjoy your stay here and don't forget to subscribe and share.

We will be sharing best practises in the graphic design, software reviews, interviews with expert logo designers, best logo designs, and better branding practices. We hope that you will help us improve by leaving your comments and sharing your own logo designs with us.