Oct 20
Corporate housestyle evolves over time
2004 at 04.39 am posted by Veerle
As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, a strong logo can evolve over time and still remain recognizable. When designing a logo you can be influenced by certain design trends. To achieve a strong logo you need to find a certain balance between being timeless and modern. Modern, to keep it a bit trendy and stylish, and timeless, to remain recognizable and strong. Not an easy task.
Simplicity it very important in the creation of a corporate housestyle. Starting from basic shapes like squares, circles, lines is always a good idea. Using less lines and shapes keeps your logo more recognizable. Still, you need to find originality. Drawing just a red square with a nice fontface next to it will not give you a strong logo.
Here is an example of a logo I redesigned for a client. They wanted us to create their brochure, business cards, website, desktop backgrounds, PowerPoint presentations... First thing to 'inspect' is their logo and corporate housestyle. First impression: not too bad at all and doable. I can only suggest the client some ideas an see what he thinks of it, right?
I analyze very briefly 'the good and the bad':
The good:
- its simplicity, simple shapes
- very recognizable
The bad:
- bad choice of fontface
- color could be better, less flashy
As always I've designed a few from scratch and some that don't change much of the general design since the logo is very recognizable. My first hunch was that they'll go for the latter. It's always good to create some diversity and show the client very different logos, but in this case I knew by experience that I need to keep it close to the original. Once he actually sees the different designs he might be convinced his logo will improve. This is of course no guarantee, it depends on a lot of criteria (which I won't go into detail). One tip I sometimes use to speed up the process of choosing is adding a 'rather' less nice one. The less nicer ones in my example are those in the flashy blue with an awkward fontface.
This is the logo the client chose:
Now, since the company's activity is about streaming video, I found it not a bad idea to create a flat and 3D glassy version. The 3D glassy version is used for screen media like the website, online presentations, desktop designs etc. The flat one is used on printed matter like business cards, letterheads, brochure etc.
As you can see creativity and originality is needed, and that's why a designer has to accomplish the job ;-) And it's not like some people think that you push one button and it rolls out the printer, done deal, easy job. For me designing a strong logo is one of the more challenging tasks and more often I'm stuck on it and need extra time to get it right.
15served
1
Nice work there
I like how you “tweak” the process by throwing in a couple of “weaker” designs, that is something I have also done for web interface for mock ups for clients.
2
Hi,
interesting writing. As I’ve just recently started making websites for people, it’s good to read something about a design process. Making a website is relative easy, apart from dealing with some browser-bugs off course, compared to designing a logo or finding a good style for a company. Do you use the same ‘trick’ of offering a choice, when designing a website??
Matthijs
3
Quite a few designers put a lot of effort into one or two designs, and then throw in some weaker designs to pad things out. However that can really backfire if the client ends up liking one of the weaker designs. As such I tend to show the client only one basic design concept, with a number of variations.
I really like the logo btw.
4
I like your lessons. It’s good that you make a difference between the print- and the screenversion.
Btw do you see this?
Free Menu Designs
5
You might want to change the ‘pepsi’ reflection in the glass logo to an arch refelction, it looks more natural with a globe then this ‘apple’ refelction :-)
I personally like the the middle logo, without the type (that’s horrible, LOL), the dax font with the middle logo would make a killer combo.
To bad the client already chose.
6
A good reflections example is the ‘CPU Portal’ widget from Konfabulator. It’s gorgious. It comes with the general install.
7
@mathijs, no I don’t do this often, almost never actually because this trick can backfire. I try just to make all designs good enough.
@Andy you are right, it is tricky I know. I do this trick only when I’m almost certain. I know this client for years so I kind of knew he wouldn’t go for those. He told me if I could improve his logo I could go ahead but I immediately knew I could only do some minor changes, like color and typeface. I often do the same as you, create variations from 1 logo. Most of the time this happens in a second stage when the client has chosen 1 or 2 favorable version and asks me to work further in this direction.
@mario, yes I knew this link, it’s been there for a while already and it still delivers me some traffic ;-) If credits are there then it’s fine by me.
@dion, what can I say people have different tastes ;-) The look of Konfabulator is great indeed. About the typeface, I just wanted to have a logo with a different typeface which is less boring then Verdana. I also prefer Dax it’s an elegant font… unfortunately this font is very popular (a few big brands use it also like Proximus for instance).
8
I like the logo, but more especially I like the time and trouble you’ve taken to document the process. It’s very valuable to have an inisight in to others’ ways of working.
I’m curious in how detailed a brief you recieved from the client. In my experience, real world briefs are very different from the kind of comprehensive briefs one gets when one is in college!
9
What did your client have to say about the new logo’s shelf life? A new design may look “fresh” today but it runs a risk of becoming tiresome (or worse, obnoxious) a few years from now.
10
@Mearso, the briefings I receive to create a logo are mostly very “brief”, just the basics like background information on the company’s activities, what it needs to reflect,… Sometimes they give me a total “carte-blanche”, sometimes they point me into some directions (which I prefer). What I often do is ask the client to show me examples of logos they like. This way I get a sense of their preferences.
@Kevin, I don’t understand exactly what you mean with “shelf life”. But if you are referring to the glassy version, then you have missed the part about the fact that there is also a flat version, which is the main version and is in my opinion timeless. In fact it’s a bit like the Apple logo, they have also a flat version and a glassy version.
11
I really like the one that the client picked, I think it is the most balanced one. When you print it in black and white like in emails and stuff will you try to gray any of it out or just straight black and white?
12
@George, for black and white output I would use just straight black and white, like fax documents for instance or a black and white advertisement. This way you can keep the logo very visible.
13
I didn’t found a contact link or something like that, thats why I report an error as a comment.
With my RSS Reader I always recieve an error. Looks like the feed has a different charset than the server.
http://feedvalidator.org/check?url=http://veerle.duoh.com/index.xml
14
@Andre: There nothing wrong with my RSS feed since I always check it when I post. The error that you are referring to is just an error about the degree sign that was not correctly translated. It’s fixed now but I sincerely doubt that’s the reason you get an error.
15
Looks like it was the reason. Your feed is now updated again in my RSS reader. No error messages anymore.