Transcription
Designing a logo [Music] sucks. Now, look, I obviously don't mean that. I love being a logo designer, but logo design is hard. It is not as easy as everyone thinks that it is. I'm actually in the middle of designing a logo right now for one of my clients, and I am stuck. Like, seriously stuck.
Now, I have a few ideas. I've started sketching, kind of, some initial responses to the brief, but if I'm honest, the ideas just aren't idear. I don't think I have a single concept here that I'm genuinely confident to be able to go away, put it into Illustrator, and then even present it to my client. I think this is a really normal problem for all graphic designers and logo designers to have. Like, where do we get ideas from? Where do we come up with the concept? Where do we know where to start? And how do we know when a logo design is finished? Well, that's exactly what I am today. I have a bunch of research, I've got some pens, some paper, but where does the idea come from?
Okay, so look, time is against me. I'm running out of it. I need to present this logo by the end of this week. Okay, it's Tuesday. It's 10:00. So I think sometimes when you're struggling with an idea, it's a really good idea to give yourself a deadline. So with that in mind, I am proposing that I am going to give myself a deadline of 5:00 PM today. Okay, so it's 10:00 now. We have to have a logo design that we are genuinely happy to present to our clients by the end of today. I think that little bit of pressure, hopefully, is what's going to squeeze out a good idea.
Okay, so I have 7 hours to come up with a logo design idea. Now, that sounds easy enough, but I'm aware that I actually spent 7 hours yesterday doing the same thing and came out with nothing. But hopefully, we're going to work together on this, and you're going to see exactly what kind of problems I come up against, exactly how I come up with the ideas, and where I'm looking for them. So that leads on quite nicely into, "Where the hell do we start?"
So this is the brand we're working with, okay? And that's the logo, which is just Frederick Hope, which, as you can see, is just a piece of written type. It has kind of no personality or characteristics about it. It's very simple and minimal, which is very similar to the work that he creates here, but, uh, it's lacking a lot of personality and any kind of visual identity. The owner of Frederick Hope makes just the most beautiful bespoke furniture for just crazy homes. Okay, so think about, um, walk-in wardrobes or completely bespoke fitted kitchens made from the most premium woods and finishes and brass little elements and things like that. So this is something for me to think about and consider when it comes to, um, putting ideas down on paper. Is this craftsmanship? This quality? These materials? Things like that.
Um, so now we have all that information. I'm going to start writing this down and see what we come up with. So as you can see, I have the brief from the client here. Now, I actually write this brief with them on screen together. So I think it can be dangerous if we just leave it up to our clients to write the brief. It may be that they kind of put half the amount of effort into it, 'cause nobody likes writing. So we hop on a screen, we try to make it as fun as possible, and I take him through this kind of visual identity workbook where I ask him all these different questions on screen, and I write them down in a really candid approach because then we hopefully have some really juicy ideas amongst it all. So here we have like things like the purpose, the mission, your values, and we write these down together. And by the end of it, I have this enormous document with just all, all this written information that I can go through and hopefully spark an idea. So that's exactly what I'm going to do now. I'm going to go through this document. I'm going to write some things down, just really raw on paper, and see if there's an idea in there that can hopefully spark a little bit of inspiration.
La blowing up, got missing calls.
Tote, you ain't got to hit me till you licking.
Feel like ZVF, baby. I'll be cooler than the mink.
Weather make a coke bottle, give me brain till I think better.
Back up on my grind again, hanging out with Benjamin Franklin.
Got me stanking in the L, talking dividends.
Look at what we did again, brought the water dipping in.
Down in Texas on them elbows.
Okay, great. We've got some words here, uh, that we've pulled away from the brief here. So, uh, it's a really good exercise. Now, I'm just kind of starting from scratch. I've looked at that brief, I've looked at words, I found words within words, okay? And some of these are really obvious, and some of these, um, maybe not so obvious, but I now have somewhere to start. So we've got words like bespoke, clarity, woodwork, connection, tactile, premium, perfection, unique, symmetrical, art, assembly, precision. These are really cool words. I can start to imagine already how this logo should be built, or maybe the way it should look. Maybe we should think about using symmetry, maybe we understand that it's going to need to have perfect precision, so maybe we're going to use a grid to create it. Um, but now what I want to do is I'm going to go away with these words and I'm going to flesh out a few of these words even further and think more visually about it. So how can we visually represent tactile? How can we visually represent connection? How can we visually represent perfection? So let's go away and let's do that. Let's spend 15, 20 minutes working on that.
Mag, I'mma need that right after the please.
Bet you leave way before my bread leave.
Got them Google in the caption and trying to see who said these.
Tell these hateful mother, I've been choosing love.
It's the God, baby. Tell me really, who's cool?
So about 15 minutes is up. So I've just wrote a few more words down here and, and broke down what we had. So we had tactile, connection, craftsmanship, and design. And then what I've done is I've gone away and wrote as many words under each one that I think is kind of appropriate for those things. So like tactile, we've got texture, surface, fabric, grain, fingerprint, wood, soft, hard, depth, shadows, rough. Uh, connection is link, network, join, mesh, web, knot, loop, junction, thread, unified, tied. Uh, so I can use these now as like inspiration to start creating a mark. So that's what I'm going to go away and do now. Let's do it.
Like, day I get your frequency when [Music] I'm right.
I'm about 40 minutes into sketching some initial ideas. Um, there's some okay ones in here. I'm all right about it. Look, here are some you can see going on here. There's one just in the middle there that I'm actually quite stoked about. Uh, I'm going to go and sketch a couple of these ideas out further, maybe play with some little bits. But I mean, look, as you can see, okay, so these are my sketches so far. This is what we're working with. There's a couple of ideas in here that I kind of like about connecting the F and the H of Frederick Hope together to make this kind of beautiful, like monogram like this. There's some other ways of doing it, but as you can see, guys, look, I'm not the best sketcher. I mean, quite frankly, I suck at sketching. Um, you wouldn't know I have a design degree, would you? [ __ ] Uh, I mean, my boy Jack Chitty sketches like their final pieces. I would present any one of his sketches. Me, on the other hand, I'm not very good at it, but it's just an exercise for me to try and figure out if there's any shapes or any ideas as quickly as I can on paper. It's just, it's so much faster than trying to do this inside of Illustrator.
Okay, boom. Look, we have so many more ideas now. Look, just by taking a step backwards and reading the brief, uh, we have so much to play with here, which, and there's some here that I'm really, really excited about. Um, like up here in this one here, there's a couple here that I think could work really, really well. This kind of symmetrical lowercase F with an uppercase H that looks really, really cool. There's some other ways of doing it. I don't mind these ones so much, but they feel a little bit Gothic and aggressive, but I'm going to get them in and play with those. There's some in here I really want to try. I like this F and that the kind of the tail of the F swings around and creates this H kind of mark inside of here. This seems quite interesting. I want to play with this one here. There's a couple in there I don't like. Almost this one, maybe there's something within that one, but we'll see. And there's a couple here I tried where I just played a little bit longer, just kind of went a little bit bigger with it. Now, I think it's a really good exercise. Let's get these into Illustrator and start finessing there.
Yeah, like a beautiful day. I get in your frequency when I'm not recording. Like we could do this frequently and end up like the law. You knows that I got you like you got me. Every so often I'm into your passions like, what should I invest in? You don't need a camera light to show off your perfection. Standing in a mirror like, damn. That's cuing in those. And I'm genuine. Now I got you blushing. Oh, come on.
Look, this is why logo design sometimes sucks because I've been working in Illustrator now. It's 3:00, and I've been really stoked about this idea. Like, I'm getting excited. I'm thinking, yeah, this has got something about it. And then I've spotted something that's ruined the whole design for me. Check this out. Right, here we go. Here is my logo design that I'm working on. Um, I love it so far, right? We got this beautiful F here, and then the H mark just here for that Frederick Hope. We've got these lovely little shadows happening where there's kind of this connection and things joining together in this kind of finessed, beautiful way. But now all I can see is this. What does this look like to you? Now, I know exactly what that looks like. That looks like a penis. It looks phallic. I'm so gutted, man. This is just one of the things that happens as a logo designer when you are so close to the subject, whether you're sketching or you're on screen, sometimes it's really hard to see it. And then you take a step back, and then suddenly you see something that's really inappropriate. Now, I have one rule with this, always. If for a second you have to question it, if you think, "Oh, maybe that looks like that," it looks like that. You can't run with it, uh, 'cause somebody else is going to see it too. So, look, I got no choice but to get back inside of Illustrator, see if there's something I can do to amend this. Um, maybe there's a way I could still have this concept but find a way to not make it look like a [Music] penis.
Through these Huns, get to it.
Ain't had to tell them I'm the truth.
I think they knew it.
Don't like to talk about that.
I like to do it.
So while these other going through it, you see meing through these H.
Get it.
Okay, so these are the marks that I've created here. We have like, uh, the standard black and white one and an inverted one. Now, I really do like this lowercase R intertwining with the H. Um, but I, I'm worried that these little serifs are making it feel a little bit too traditional. I'm worried this is looking a little bit too, um, kind of older and mature, maybe. I think it works really, really well as a stamp that could be stamped into wood, but, um, I'm not completely convinced by this at the moment. I'm starting to think it's maybe a little bit too traditional. It's, it feels a little bit older, maybe, than the kind of work that Frederick Hope creates. Um, I like it as a concept. I'm not going to write it off completely, but I'm now going to move on to another one or see if there's a way I can make this feel a little bit more contemporary, a little bit more modern. I think just removing those serifs and removing those little bit less on the flourishes could be what changes it. [Music]
Woo! Team, we are nearly there. I am so close to this one now. Do you remember at the start of the day where I was deflated? I had no idea what I was going to do. I genuinely was really, really stuck. Uh, yesterday I tried for just hours and hours to come up with a mark. I thought they all sucked. I didn't like it. I've come away, I've got stuck in with this brief, and actually now I feel like I'm so much closer to a mark. So I will going to share this with you. I'm going to share my thought process behind what I'm doing here, especially when I'm inside of Illustrator and how I may, um, going back to that brief and connecting the dots. So check this out.
So this is the mark that I showed you earlier that I got really excited about. Um, it's this lowercase F intertwined with this uppercase H. I love the concept and idea, but this execution just feels a little bit too traditional. It feels kind of much more on the older side of things, um, because really of these serifs and, uh, this variable kind of stroke width that we get here and these little flourishes. It's really cool and it's like, really established. It feels very premium, but it feels very old premium, not new premium. So love the concept, just need to work on the execution. So what I did here is I've slightly changed the serifs that you can see here. The serifs now are less offensive, they're less kind of in your face, and we have this solid stroke width of the F. And just to add a little bit more kind of contemporaneity to it, um, but also keep this F shape in line with the same design language as our H here, it tapers off in a totally new way. So we get this completely solid line tapering off here and tapering off here. Otherwise, they were kind of stopping abruptly and it looked just, it looked like just a standard line. Now, when we just bring in a little bit more depth to this logo by cutting away pieces, so it feels like they're overlapping and intertwining, and giving us this very tactile, remember we, we wanted to create a tactile mark, something that feels like it's been embossed or pressed into something, something I can physically touch, like wood grain. Now, this gives us this feeling because we're cutting away pieces, it gives us those shadows and those depths. So I'm seriously excited about this one. I'm just going to work on it a little bit more.
Okay, so I have just text my good friend Mr. Jack Chitty and shared the logo with him. I share everything with him just to try and get another set of eyes on it. Uh, and he says this. He says, "It's beautiful, man. My only thought is, I don't think the F reads easily enough." And he's totally right. I don't think that F is prominent enough at the minute. Uh, you can kind of tell it's there. I think the H takes more of a center stage, not that that's a terrible thing, but I think we need to give as much emphasis on the F as we are on the H. So I'm going to go back into Illustrator, see if I can figure out how to make that F more prominent. But we are seriously running out of time now. I need to get this thing finished. I don't think I am going to have the absolute perfect logo design today. I just don't think that's happening, but I think by the end of the day, I'm going to have a concept that I'm really confident in. It may just need a little bit of work here or there, but I mean, what a day to go from absolutely no idea to the end of the day and have something out of nothing, which is what logo design is kind of all about. So let's go and do it. [Music]
Ah, I'm running out of time. So I think I need to just call it quits here, and I'm going to show you the concept that I have and some of the design thinking around it. So check this out. So remember at the start of the day, we had these words before we started designing this, and we were using these to give us the inspiration for that logo design. Now, we had words like tactile, connection, craftsmanship, and design. So let's talk about tactile. So this logo, I wanted to make it feel like you could physically touch it, like it had elements to it that were almost three-dimensional, right? Just like kind of the materials that they use at Frederick Hope to make everything. They use these luscious grains of wood and brass and material. So how do we put that in a logo design? Well, that's exactly what we tried to do in this logo by giving it a three-dimensional feeling. By cutting away certain things underneath the stems of letters, it gives this shadow effect, like three-dimensional, like things are going underneath or on top of one another. That's how we lift it off the page.
We then had words like connection. So the way that Frederick Hope builds all of their furniture is with very clever and precise joinery. It's the way we put, kind of, two pieces of wood together that they're super tight and they work really, really well as a one singular unit. So that's what I wanted to do with this particular monogram. Instead of looking at it as just two letter forms, how do we make it just one, that mono letter form? And that's what we've done here. Is we've created an F and an H as one singular piece that is all flowing and connected together, just like the joinery that they use when they build their furniture.
Then we have words like craftsmanship, skill, art, and quality. And that's exactly why I put that monogram within an emblem shape, within this kind of squarish circle because it should feel like a stamp or a signature, something that's left behind after somebody has completed something or building something. And that was always the mission when speaking to the client, is they wanted to be able to leave this very small, little mark somewhere to suggest who had created this wonderful piece of furniture. And that little emblem just helps us tie that together. Right, that's it. There is nothing else I can do today because it's actually 7:00, not 5:00. So I've overcooked this whole thing by a couple of hours. But you guys saw how many problems I came up against whilst working on this logo today. So naturally, it's going to set us back. Now, is this the logo that I'm going to present to my client? Probably not. It's definitely close. I'm taking this as a massive win. At the start of today, I had zero idea what ever what I was going to do. I had no concept, no logo designs, nothing. Now I have something that I'm genuinely quite confident in. It just needs a little bit more refinement. Look, there's a whole visual identity that we need to flesh out for this thing yet. There's logo types to create. So, uh, look, it doesn't end there. But what we can learn from this is actually when we're stuck and we can't come up with ideas or we feel like frauds, half the time, and we think, "That's it, I've run out of creative juices, I'm never going to come up with an idea again," is actually to just take a step back, look at the brief, reread it, and actually, you can find so much inspiration in that. I'm so glad that I just stopped looking at Illustrator or logos on Pinterest and actually just sat down with my own thoughts and sketched out ideas just based on the information that I had.
Guys, I want to say a massive and ridiculous thank you for watching this video because I know at the minute, the design community is screaming for a more realistic side to this. Uh, where do we get our ideas from? Where do we find clients? How much should you be charging for logo designs? These are all topics that I want to cover, and I will cover. But this seemed like the perfect first video to put together of how we deal with maybe creative block or logo design problems right in the moment. So if you enjoyed this video, please do leave a comment. Let me know. All feedback is absolutely appreciated. Guys, thank you so much. [Music] Peace. You.