graphic design, freelancing, illustration, advertising, web design

Last year I was asked to create a logo for In4systems, a company that creates property management software. This software is used by companies who need to manage large portfolios of properties, such as landlords and housing associations. I started by asking a few questions about their requirements and enquired about their competitors. Their brief was fairly open so I started by taking a look around at what their competitors were doing. The next stage was to start sketching. Whenever I am designing a logo I always spend a considerable amount of time sketching, it allows me to quickly try out different ideas to see what shapes and designs are like likely to work. Below are a few of my sketches which I scanned in ready for the next stage.

These sketches are very rough but they were never intended to be seen by the client they are purely a tool for me to work out my ideas. Within the sketches I thought it would be a good idea to include a descriptor/strap line in these which would give a more immediate sense of what the company does and worked this into the designs.

The next step was to start working up some of the logo design sketches on the computer. Using Adobe illustrator I used the scanned sketches as a guide and started designing the logos in black and white, choosing what I felt were appropriate fonts. Working in black and white enabled me to concentrate on shapes and type rather than be distracted by colours.

Some of these I felt were working and some weren’t so I took my preferred options and started deciding on colours.

I showed these to he client and they chose their preferred option and requested some changes to colours and the addition of shapes that represented windows. The chosen design was then worked up into stationery designs for letter heads and business cards which you can see below.

I try to keep an eye on what is happening in design by keeping an eye on other design related blogs. A couple of relatively new design blogs are Margins and Columns and Logo Design Love

Margins and Columns
Margins and Columns is a blog brought to my attention by its owner Pawel Grabowski who took part in Freelancer Focus a while ago. The blog is a brochure design inspiration site something which I think is severely lacking on the web. It consists of some really beautiful brochure design examples - no writing apart from a simple category and designer credit. This could become another logopond, but for brochure designers.

Logo Design Love
Logo Design Love is owned by David Airey who already runs a very popular graphic design blog. David has already shown on his design blog how passionate he is about logo design on his design blog, so if this is anything to go by then Logo Design Love is bound to be a success. Logo Design Love has articles about famous logo design, logo design books and resources for logo design inspiration.

What new design blogs are you reading at the moment?

There are a lot of good websites out there now for logo design inspiration including most well known logopond, while these are great I always prefer looking at reference in printed book form.

I bought Dos Logos about a year ago while working on a logo design project and stuck for inspiration. Unlike many books on logo design this isn’t made up of pages of highly corporate logos, in fact there are very few logos in the book that I had seen before. As well as some conservative logo design approaches this book shows logos pushed to their limits, such as icons more like illustrations in their own right, pictograms and icons without words.

The books is split into sections such as: corporate, culture, design, fashion, media etc and explores a wide range of logos applicable to that area. Some of the logos are totally what I would call “off the wall,” some highly usable but what it does do is get you thinking about what a logo is and the different directions you can take it.

If you are looking for a book with well known logos and explanation to the designers process this is not for you, but if you want to be bombarded by logo design inspiration from the expected to the unusual this book is worth a look. A new book in the series is also out called Tres Logos.

Do you know of any good logo design books?