Breadline Design

Introduction

Logo and brand development is in my eyes the crack cocaine of graphic design. The logo is the single most important graphic any business will own, and no single piece of design will mean more to a businesses profile or public image.

As a logo designer the work can be wide and varied, one day being asked to sum up a photographer’s personality, another an international drug firms ethical outlook. The challenge lies in hitting the brief. The rush comes from nailing the idea.

This guide is for those new to logo design and wanting to gain an understanding of what it’s all about. It’s worth mentioning that there’s no right and wrong way of developing logos and brands. Design and idea generation is an organic process, and all of us have our own ways of getting to the finish line. This guide outlines my process and experiences designing logos.

Design and the art of the clever logo

I only did one branding unit at university, the brief being to redesign the Body Shop logo. After a brief lecture I went to work, and a couple of days later had selected a trendy typeface and added a butterfly as a graphic. Thinking it was the bees-knees, I put it in and got a decent grade. Believing I’d mastered logo design, I moved onto the next project and all was forgotten. It was two years later after I’d started as a junior designer in Newcastle, I was asked to design a logo for an online management training firm. After some initial fumbles in Illustrator, my Creative Director (CD) pulled me aside and asked me to take a long look at the FedEx logo, and asked what the hidden trick was within its solid typeface. Bemused I said I couldn’t see it and thought the design was a bit dull, it was only after the hidden forward-pointing arrow between the E and the X was pointed out to me that the penny dropped, and the whole world of logo design opened itself up to me.

Once I’d had this FedEx revelation I soon started to see clever graphical tricks and ideas in many other logos, a notable example being the Amazon logo. No longer selling just books, they wanted a new logo that would represent them selling almost everything. The elegant answer being a joining line that not only looks