We build logos from scratch here. I’m very proud of that fact. I could tell you all about our formal process with lots of big design buzz words, but I think it would be better to take you through a journey we took on a recent recent project.
Step 1:
We meet with Loewinsohn Flegle Deary for over two hours for our branding kickoff meeting. The discussion involved favorite cars, architecture, interior design, music, etc. About an hour into our meeting, the magic began. Each partner began to open up about why they feel they practice law better than other guys. They talked about passion, the good feeling of a job well done, killer instincts, and the drive to do everything they could with their God-given talent. By the end of that meeting, we knew LFD. And that’s the first step in creating a real logo.
Step 2:
Our designers worked for days sketching the names of the partners in hundreds of fonts. We worked on layout, possible symbols, typefaces, and possible opportunities for ligatures. (the artful way letters can flow into one another) At the end of the process, we had a large stack of paper, filled with little scribbles. At this point, we could have found a font that looked similar to our sketches and created clean logos comps for our meeting. Instead, we prefer to include our clients in as much of the process as possible. In our round 1 presentation, we showed the lawyers and their marketing folks about 150 sketches. We pointed out strengths and weaknesses of them all and listen closely as they helped us design their identity. This is crucial. A mistake designers often make is ignoring how creative their clients can be. We don’t tell our clients who they are, we help them express what they already know.
Step 3:
The partners picked their favorite ideas and now it was up to our team to turn those ideas into a polished reality. We searched through thousands of fonts to find many of the characteristics our sketches had produced. This is a tedious process since we don’t look at fonts during the sketching phase. We trust the instinct of our drawing ability and don’t want that to be colored by predetermined type shapes. Once we’ve found a few type faces the serve our purpose, we begin to modify them to suit our concepts. Hours are spent polishing in the computer to create a custom font that appears effortless and perfect. When we presented these polished logos to the client, the decision was quick and decisive. Their help in the design process ensured that they liked the results.
Step 4:
With the logo agreed upon, there is one major portion of the process remaining. We have to build the logo finals so that it can be used by any vendor the firm uses in the future. In the case of the LFD logo, this includes a small, medium and large version ready to be used in everything from an outdoor metal sign to a PowerPoint template. The LFD brand also includes a monogram style icon that is used when a medium cannot accurately reproduce the detail in the full logo.
I hope this has given some insight into how RD2 builds a logo. The LFD logo system was a huge success for us and we look forward to doing many more custom identities this year.
