Designers Spill the Beans: How to Make Your Own Logo from Scratch

https://blog.themeskingdom.com/how-to-make-your-own-logo-from-scratch/

60 14 8 years ago

blog.themeskingdom.com

This advice is basically telling you to learn to become a logo designer.

kawfey• 8 years ago

Sometimes I wish GNU/Linux developers and evangelists wouldn't take this advice, because there's some pretty bad designs (and a few passable) logos out there. https://www.gnu.org/graphics/graphics.html

aleksandra_5982• 8 years ago

Well, kind of.

It was supposed to teach a reader how to think like a graphic designer and what to pay attention to. The ultimate goal of the text was to make a logo creating process a bit easier.

notatcomputer68• 8 years ago

Pick a nice font and color write the company/product name or an abbreviation.

prawn• 8 years ago

This works as a fallback, especially if the alternative is getting caught up on a full design process for a project that might not even go anywhere.

For all the logos of all my projects (literally dozens of them), my least favourite was the lone one done by a dedicated graphic designer.

actionscripted• 8 years ago

1: Find logos you like, and a few from your industry.

2: Pick a few colors you like, and a few in your industry.

3: Pick a few fonts you like, and a few in your industry.

4: Find icons/shapes related to your business (google images: "[business type] icon" as a start, then branch from there based on what you find).

5: Mash it all together as many different ways a possible.

6: See what you like/dislike. Repeat as needed.

That's it, that's the secret. Get stuff you like and stuff that works and mash it together to see what happens. Then take your mash-ups and keep mashing and playing until you find something that fits. You don't have to love it, just get something that works. A lot of folks don't like their branding initially.

What designers won't tell you is that the process is sometimes just brute-forcing creativity and that's totally okay. You can't always feel inspired or have that "one perfect idea" and you've still gotta get stuff done.

com2kid• 8 years ago

After spending too many hours unable to decide on a color theme (those color theme designers are not all that great IMHO) I saved myself the time and trouble and paid a real designer a good chunk of $ to get an actual logo, a great color scheme, and a PDF of design language guidelines.

I'd rank it as the single best decision I've made for my startup. With the design language guidelines I can throw together UI screens super easy, I just need to assemble the parts I've been given in an appropriate way. The logo receives constant positive feedback, and having a good set of colors simplifies a lot of UI and UX tasks.

No way could I have done it myself to this level of quality in anything resembling a timely fashion.

A good logo and color scheme can had for ~$1000. Yes that is a lot of money for a super early stage startup. Figure it'll take multiple days to do it yourself, 20 hours, $50/hr, unless you seriously low-ball your time, just pay someone else to do it.

Honestly, if making anything resembling a consumer facing product, throw a couple thousand and get preliminary design work done up front. Ask for a few sample UI layouts based on whatever rough ideas for "functionality" exist. The important part is learning how information is going to be structured on a page/screen. Colors, font, font size, font style? What sort of grid is being used, how much white space, rounded or non-rounded UI elements, drop shadows yes/no, what do confirmation/cancellation buttons look like?

Have someone who is good at it make all of these decisions. Having the same person make all of these decisions means there will be a consistent look and feel to the product.

Wistar• 8 years ago

I consider $1000 for a good logo and design/use guidelines to be an incredible bargain.

layer8• 8 years ago

And here I thought this was about how to make your own Logo interpreter in Scratch.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_(programming_language)

[2] https://scratch.mit.edu/

timbit42• 8 years ago

That would have been much more interesting.

CharlesW• 8 years ago

Missing from Tip 2 is maybe the biggest "secret", which is that all visual designers build libraries of inspirational reference material. For example, logo designers will typically have several books full of logotypes, symbols, etc.

My recommendation is to start with these two books: Symbol[1] and Logo[2].

[1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/1780671849/ [2] https://www.amazon.com/dp/1780671806/

aleksandra_5982• 8 years ago

Yeah, you're right. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

detritus• 8 years ago

Tip 4: Think About the Form and Not About Symmetry

er.. no. Symmetry isn't a be-all and end-all, but any half-decent designer will be flipping or mirroring horizontally and vertically their logos and pieces to check they look 'ok' the 'other way around'. The human brain's a funny thing, and some people's perception differs from others ('No!'), so it's worth ensuring that what you think looks ok doesn't look completely borked to other people. Flipping's a handy tip here.

Designers Spill the Beans: How to Make Your Own Logo from Scratch

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