visual identity
logo design
Logo Design
How I approach these from start to end
2020 - 2026
Designer
I like to dabble in logo design. Over the years I learned and developed a repeatable process for designing brand marks: from a list of words a brand wants to be associated with, through a bunch of rough sketches, to a final test of a simple question: would you wear this?
Much of this process is derived from lessons shared by absolute wizards like Allan Peters (@allanpeters), Anton Burmistrov (@antoncreations) and CJ Cawley (@cj.cawley.design). Credit where credit is due!
process
How I approach a logo.
Every logo on this page went through roughly the same five steps. Rather than repeating the method three times, here is the shared process. Below, you can follow each logo through it.
01
Brand association list
I start with a list of nouns and symbols the client hopes people will associate with the brand. These should be simple, descriptive, and easy to visualize. From there, I begin combining and materializing them.
02
Rough sketches
Somewhere between 10 and 50 quick sketches based on the association list. No detail, no polish, just getting ideas out of my head and onto paper as fast as possible.
03
Digital brand marks
I digitize the 5 to 10 strongest sketches as clean brand marks and present them alongside the brand associations. No typography, no colour, only black/grey and white. If the idea does not work in black and white, it is not good enough.
04
Brand systems
The client picks 2 to 3 favorites, which I develop into simple brand systems: hero logo, color scheme, a brand family of name-and-mark combinations, a brand pattern, and a piece of mock merchandise. That last one answers a deceptively useful question.
05
Final logo and color variants
The client chooses one. I apply last feedback and finalize it into the definitive logo with its color variants.
"
“Would you wear this?” is such a valuable question here. It makes the brand come alive in the client's eyes, cuts past your own taste and gets to whether an identity actually appeals to someone else. - Allan Peters
YDC
Young Deloitte Consulting
2020
YDC is a community that connects everyone in the company under 35 who is not yet a manager: the junior layer. That idea of connection sits at the heart of the mark. The letters link together like a chain, each one holding onto and supporting the next.
01
Brand association list
Community
Bond
Network
sprout
Bridge
Together
journey
group
02
Rough sketches
Rough hand sketches for fast exploration, not too much detail and no color yet. Going fast here helps spark a bit of creativity as it keeps your brain from immediately judging your own ideas.
The client was also interested in logo marks that incorporated the letters ‘YDC’ in the logo itself, so we explored a couple of ways to do so, still with the association list in mind.
03
Digital brand marks
The strongest sketches digitized as clean, draft brand marks. If it does not work in black and white, it does not move forward.
04
Brand systems & mockup merchandise
Client's favorites are worked out into a brand system, each with hero logo, brand family, pattern, and mockup merchandise. This is where the "would you wear this?" question comes into play.
05
final logo & color variants
