A strong visual identity is vital in communicating what you’re all about to your audience.
New start-ups can be tempted to go with something cheap and of low quality but starting your business or project with really solid, beautiful branding gives a far better first impression – and it needn’t be expensive.
Here’s some info on the Army of Cats approach.
Research
As well as getting to know more about you and your business, I also take the time to research the area in which you work.
Examining the branding & visuals of others doing a similar thing to you is vital. It ensures I have the understanding to create something which is unique and original but which is still appropriate for – and understood by – your target audience. It also helps me identify any trends and reoccurring visuals in logo imagery, colour and typography.
Ultimately, this means the end result isn’t just something I pull out of a hat – it’s backed up by proper research.
Idea Generation
Everything from the research stage feeds into establishing our ‘success criteria’ – a checklist of everything we need to make a successful logo. This means that as ideas are developed, they can be evaluated on how well they tick the boxes rather than simply “I like how that looks.”
Time is spent sketching potential logo ideas as well as exploring typography choices and colour options. I provide recommendations if I think a particular direction might be the strongest and after some back and forth feedback the design process moves forward with developing chosen ideas.
Development
The strongest ideas selected from the sketches are developed with further iterations. Sometimes this means trying out combinations of ideas, mixing and matching elements until the right personality shines through.
We also pay attention to what is not working – discarding ideas that for whatever reason aren’t quite right brings us closer to the end goal. This is very much a refining process; through gently sifting the ideas the direction for the final design is revealed.
Final Design & Roll-out
Once we’ve identified the final direction, I polish it all up into the final logo and branding assets. I don’t simply hand over one logo and leave you to it – rather, I produce a whole suite of different formats to fit a variety of applications.
From print-ready, scale-able vector files, to social media icons, to mono-colour variants. I make sure your branding toolkit comes with everything you need along with a handy style-guide showing you how to get the best out of it.
If you have additional requirements such as business cards, stationary, or marketing materials, I roll the branding out onto these items as well.
This is the process by which I can produce the best work for you. Not only that but it’s collaborative – my experience and your input results in beautiful, unique, custom branding which will grow with your business.
You can see a nice assortment of logos and identity work here.
Interested in having me work on something for you? Please feel free to drop me a line and I’d be happy to discuss further.
