Blog 9: The Logo Method Part 2
Despite lots of work on my logo this week, I am still not quite done, but I am confident that I will have a final one by Monday. As I started doing some sketching as a follow up from my previously-made mind map and mood board, I learned some more important things about logo design. I am very fortunate to have an artist for a dad, as I was able to go to him for feedback and advice on my ideas. I learned quickly that I need to be more intentional in my designs. I would spend some time filling up a page with half-thought-out ideas, present them to my dad, expecting him to tell me “This one is my favorite. Do that,” but that is not quite how it works. I realized that I was being pretty lazy, not committing to certain lines or shapes, sticking to one font or icon that I liked, and overall just not exploring. Finally, my dad showed me a page of logos that he recently presented to a client (he doesn’t usually do logos, so it was unexpected but lucky for me). He explained that each of the fifteen or so ideas was fairly unique and looked complete. As in, he didn’t just replace one icon with a few different font ideas or attach a couple different icons to the same font. He explored shapes, composition, creative embellishments, and more. It was like a lightbulb went off in my head, and I started having idea after idea, the process being more fun than tedious. Instead of meeting a quota for filling a page, I was scrambling to get all my ideas out.
Another key thing that my dad taught me was that if I want to have an icon, then I have to focus the creativity on that. It’s way too distracting to have a fancy icon as well as fancy words next to it. Same thing for the other way–if I wanted to make a cool font, then I should do without the icon. Think about the AT&T logo: they have a cool icon and the name is in a pretty ordinary sans serif font. Coca-Cola, on the other hand, has a unique word mark logo, with iconic cursive lettering and no icon. That helped me focus my creativity more on the icon and not so much on making the words super thought out as well.
Finally, I’ve heard from a couple of you that you like the snail logo design I showed last week, and while I like it as well (and it does seem to fit my not-so-timely tendencies), I don’t believe I will end up going in that direction. As I worked on more designs this week, I found that I wanted my logo to be more creative and not just some little doodle I thought up. Some of my more recent ideas actually stem from interests that I have right now in my life and things that have inspired my creativity. With all that said, I will be sharing a few pictures from my sketchbook showcasing the process thus far. The first few pages are, as I said before, really just a lot of half-attempted sketches, slight variants from previous ideas, with a few creative sparks that I used later. I most liked the ones playing with my name in Chinese, an icon version of a Korean hand heart, and incorporating a paper airplane like from “Paperman,” the all time best Disney short ever made. Later, I did some more designs focusing on those three from before, but I still wasn’t doing much to explore different variants of those ideas or coming up with new ones. Finally, I had that lightbulb moment and the last page I have so far includes a wider variety of ideas, incorporating previous designs and more, and just being more creative and intentional with every decision. I will be able to explain this process a little more in depth and what I drew from for my design ideas in my final presentation, but it’s probably a bit too much to keep going into right now.
Before I finish, there’s not much to report with regard to my internships, especially for Tim, but I finished both the Stockell Homes packets, which I will include below. Keep in mind that I don’t know that much about home building, so some pages I totally gave up on cutting down the text and just put it all in there. The original ones were especially redundant, and I probably didn’t need to do as much editing as I did, but I learned a lot about homebuilding in doing so! With that in mind, of course I’m sure that some things will have to be changed if the company feels that it doesn’t give enough information or anything else that they don’t like (or Sadie and the team for that matter), but this is the completed versions as of Friday at 1:30 p.m. I stayed a little late so I would be able to show you both completed projects instead of just one!
Building Process Packet – Stockell Custom Homes
Cost Breakdown Packet – Stockell Custom Homes
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