This series of blog posts will look at some recent logo designs I have completed and the process I followed to get to the final design.

The basics:

The first thing I need to do when a client contacts me is to establish the basics. To do this, I send them a custom questionnaire with several questions which helps me to determine a few things.

1. What line of business or service they are in.
2. What they want their new design to do for them.
3. The image they want to create with their design.
4. What types of media the logo will be used on.

The Design Brief:

The Business of Weddings Ireland is an educational marketing and networking event for wedding professionals held annually.  The event had an existing logo but owner Annie Byrne felt it needed to be updated to something a little more “professional and creative” yet still retain it’s simplicity.

Here was the original logo:

Annie liked her existing logo colours so wanted the new design to keep along the same lines. She preferred the logo to be more business-like.

The logo was going to be used on the website, for email marketing, other promotional material at the conference. It needed to be based on muted colours for a relaxing feel.

First step:

I normally start by working on font selections. Some designers will start with the graphic but I find once I have the font selected, that it gives me a better feel for what the graphic needs to achieve.

I provided Annie with a number preselected fonts based on her answers given in the design brief questionnaire. I included a number of serif and sans serif fonts for her to take a look at. Some fonts we looked at were Helvetica, Bodoni, Akzidenz Grtotesk , Futura and several others.

After looking at these fonts together we decided that we should integrate a script font in some way to soften the design. We finally decided on a combination of Bondoni  Condensed, Bodoni Regular and Montecarlo Pro. You can see it below.

Second step:

Time to work on the graphic.  As the conference is for wedding professionals and networking, I decided to work on logomarks that would include a networking element, a wedding element or both.

A – A stylised group of 8 people all interlinked in a circle to show the networking element but also reminiscent of looking down on the top of a diamond ring (minus the heads of course!).

B – Was a simple bride and groom design.

C – 4 people with arms outstretched around a Celtic Triskelion which represents actions, cycles, progress, revolution and competition.

D – A simple diamond design.

E – Three-tiered wedding cake, with curly cake stand, ribbon and heart.

 

After further discussions with Annie, She decided the cake element would be the best. So here we have them combined.



Next we looked at colours. We considered approximately 16 different colour variations, some along the original logos colours and some which Annie may not have considered originally.

Annie decided on this as the final arrangement and colour. I think it really works and fits in with her original design brief.  Below it, are the icons for use on Facebook and twitter.

If you’ve read this far, congratulations! I’ll have to make the next blog shorter!

 

Until next time,

Cathy.