How to Design a Logo From Inspiration to Execution

Designing a logo that stems from pure inspiration and yet manages to be both accurate and truly representative of your client’s needs, is one of the most difficult tasks in the world of art and design.

A logo must embody each and every aspect of a company, but to accomplish this using only small shapes or alphabets requires true skill and experience. In layman’s terms, a logo needs to be the simplest yet the most concise representation of a company and for that you need to employ the ‘3 Ps’: Precision, Patience and Productivity.

In order to design a great logo you need to have a clear concept in your mind, a notebook, a pen and last but not the least – great software. The software that I and every other logo designer would recommend is Adobe Illustrator as it comes with the best tools for designing the perfect logo.

In order to merge graphic art with branding, you need to start with your inspiration for the design. As an artist you will glimpse inspiration in everything you see. The trick is to capture it and convey it in the right way.

As an example, let’s assume a company named ‘Circle’ has asked us to design their logo. In this instance I would be taking the shape ‘circle’ as an inspiration for my logo designs. I am going to create a number of logos based on the elements of a circle and we’ll see how each logo holds a unique meaning in itself.

In the first design, I have used the concept of contrast and the alphabet. In this, I have transformed the ‘C’ of the ‘Circle’ into an actual circular shape in such a way that it represents both the elements of the shape and the alphabet. In order to clean up the logo and give it a clearer meaning, I have changed the color of the smaller arc which makes the ‘C’ shape more prominent.

This step was necessary otherwise the observer might have confused the ‘C’ with an ‘O’. The font of this logo signifies professionalism and sophistication.

Now we’ll move towards technology. Let’s assume that the company has a website and they like to stay in constant contact with their customers. One of my favorite symbols is the RSS feed symbol, and to meet the company’s needs you can incorporate the design of a RSS feed within the logo. I have done the same thing in my next design in which I played a bit with the circle and converted it to an RSS symbol.

You can make any type of logo, as the possibilities are endless. If our imaginary company ‘Circle’ is a restaurant chain, I can meet their logo demands by inserting a fork image which takes things towards the culinary side. In case you haven’t noticed in all these logos, the modified ‘C’ of the circle still resembles the alphabet. As I said earlier this was important as our main concentration should always be upon the company’s name and typography. You should never compromise on the font.

Creativity knows no bounds. Never stop yourself from experimenting with all sorts of designs. Always go beyond what you are thinking. Experimentation is the most basic and important step.

In the next logo I have created the simplest of design. You can see that the more simplistic the design, the more you’ll get out of it. No matter what, you must not cross the line beyond which lies complication and second- guessing.

You can merge your designs with a number of things around you. Like in the next logo I have merged headphones with my deign as if I were representing a music company. If the company produced automobiles, by making both the ‘C’s represent wheels we could accurately merge form and function.

I have created all these designs in Adobe Illustrator which is arguably the best tool for vector designing. While designing these logos I have merged my inspiration, the ‘Circle’ with some of the basic designs that represent a specific class of company.

These logos are just text based logos which are the simplest of logo designs. If you want to learn the art of logo designing, then you should always try to see what’s beyond the actual design. Through this article, I have highlighted how you can take inspiration from almost anything to create something original and manipulate a single design into multiple ones.