CREATING A STRONG LOGO IN ILLUSTRATOR

Every designer has their own process when it comes to creating a logo, this method is really easy and time efficient.

STEP1: Asking the right questions
I'ts very important to get as much useful information out of your client as possible, so make sure to ask questions that will help you graphically. Keep it simple! You don't need to know their monthly turnover.

The only questions that ever need to be asked:
1 What is the nature of the clients business?
2 What colours do they prefer? (always nice to have a pantone booklet around)
3 What style or theme did they have in mind? (eg: contemporary, playful etc...)
4 Also ask if they had any specific ideas, clients love the fact that they had some say in the making of their logo.

STEP 2: Research

Before starting a logo its always a good idea to browse through a search engine or two (flickr, google etc.), just to see whats out there and this will usually spark some great ideas!

STEP 3: Sketch, sketch & sketch some more

The best way to keep your logo nice and organic looking is to sketch it first. Draw absolutely anything that comes to mind, you can filter through them later!

STEP 4: Choose

Now choose from your sketch pad, its always nice to choose at least 3 to work with digitally. Scan and trace your chosen ideas.

STEP 5: Play with elements

Once you've finished tracing your sketched artwork, try moving, rotating or perhaps overlapping elements until you have something you think you can start adding colour to.

STEP 6: Typeface

Now that you have a general concept and a logo you are happy with, it's time to add some typography!

It's now time to see how the logo could work with some text. Experiment with a variety of layouts and typefaces to see what would work best, perhaps let your client have his/her input into what typeface they think works best. Above you can see just some, of many, different typefaces I've tried, the typeface I chose here is Myriad, which works for it's forward, clean, legible, fresh nature - one that reflects the business model as a whole.

STEP 7: Colour

Now that we have a typeface and logo concept for our client, it's now time to choose the colors for the logo. Above you can see a few of the many that I tried. In the end I chose red and black.

STEP 8: Final logo

That's it, were done! One more thing, when presenting your final logo, always show it on a white background as well as a black background, to show it's versatility.