Mar 24 / Our Logo Design Process Was Great, Your Logo Process Should Be Too
Two months ago when the name Five Technology was agreed upon we then had to give birth to a logo. I enlisted the help of Sarah Lavin, a freelance designer who I was referred to by our first client, Eventive Meetings. I was able to get a glimpse of Sarah’s skills and process from Eventive and knew she was a good fit for bringing our logo to life.
Planning & Discovery
Since I’m a creative guy myself I put together some samples of logo’s and design elements that inspire me. I also included some rough mocks of the web interface we were working on (which completely changed after our logo came alive). Sarah and I talked on the phone for about an hour and then she said she would have some structural concepts to me in a week. It’s important to get the structure down on a logo before you get carried away with colors and other details. After just a few days my inbox had the logo concepts below.
We liked the strong and solid feel that the far right concept gave us. It embodied the trust and strength we wanted to convey to our market.
Colors & Variations
Next came laying out some color options and tweaking the layout. I won’t make you look at the 12 to 15 different structural and color combinations that we made Sarah pull together for us, but the three below are good example some of the avenues we explored.
We toyed with the structure of the “tucked” Technology and also playing off the leg of the V into an exclamation point. In the end, the further versions were just options we said “No” to and the original structure won out. I have witnessed this extra step of creation with clients before and commented to Sarah I wouldn’t do that … but I did. 
The Final Logo Result
Below is the winner as you already noticed from our website or blog header. It was a great experience and one that was truly productive thanks to Sarah’s expertise and guidance. If you are considering a logo design or a redesign, make sure you can see an example of a similar process from your contracted designer. Logo design is not just a one and done “here you go”, but a process of planning, creativity and options. A good logo designer helps you throw the right stuff at the wall and then helps you see what best sticks.
A good logo designer helps you throw the right elements at the wall and then enables you see what sticks for the right reasons.
-- Posted in Design |
March 24th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Hi there Aaron.
Found your site today. I like the logo! Good stuff.
I’ve stumbled your main page, you should hopefully see some traffic in the next day or so.
March 24th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
Thanks Bob, glad you happened upon the blog and found it worthy of a stumble. I wish you continued success in your Internet writing and I enjoyed your typical day post.
March 24th, 2008 at 6:59 pm
Hi Aaron, I found your information site in mybloglog, you have a great logo. Nice colors. Because i love the combination between dark blue and orange. I hope you’ll have success. Congrats!
March 25th, 2008 at 7:02 pm
Thanks Cantigi, glad you like our colors.
April 8th, 2008 at 2:44 am
Hello Aaron,
First off, thanks very much for stopping by my own website.
Second, what is the symbolism of the split ‘v’? I had thought how using a V to embody the roman numeral for the number 5 would be appropriate, and wondered if you had done similarly. It doesn’t seem like it, but I’m curious about the colour change.
April 8th, 2008 at 9:52 am
David, you bet! Your blog is a great source of expertise and real examples. I love that and so many can (and do) benefit form your posts.
Funny enough … I had not even thought of the roman numeral “V”. We were actually playing off of the slash “/” so prevalent in the Internet world and URL’s. We also felt like it formed an exclamation point to convey our excitement and passion for the web.
On the colors, we wanted a deeper blue for a few different reasons and like the energy and creativity the orange brought in contrast.
April 8th, 2008 at 10:03 am
I’ve also played off the forward slash in one of my own logos for Wired Kayaker (placing a couple of tilted kayaks before the name to signify a web address.
Thanks for the email, and I remember that 100th post of yours! Great to have you as a reader / subscriber.
April 8th, 2008 at 10:14 am
Very cool. With launching a new blog … 100 posts seems like light years away.
I hope to drag you back here a few times in getting to some milestones. Thanks David.