Healthy Logo Creation Process

A lovely price waited for us at the project completion.

This is a guest post written by my friend Rick Lipsett on how he created the logo’s of CIMA IT Solutions and Raul Colon’s Blog. This post was originally published on @ricklipsett’s blog.

In the past, we’ve brought you our creative process on logo creations, but since that post was done a long time after the project was over, it lacked information on how we go about creating Brand Identities for our clients. We knew we needed another shot at it and were thrilled, when it came knocking at our door.

Back in december, right after he established a connection with me through Twitter, Raúl Colon (@rj_c)  approached me to create his corporate identity and personal blog identity as well. If you’ve read this blog before, you know how much we LOVE creating Brand Identities. Designing a logo is like creating a magic trick. We get to define visually someone and at the same time outperform whatever we’ve done in the past.

Since Raúl needed two logos, we didn’t want one to outshine the other. And since we try to out do ourselves on every project, we decided to create both identities at the same time. Some call us overachievers, that’s the best compliment we’ve ever had.

The first thing we did, was read every last letter on our creative brief (provided by Raúl). We wanted to make sure we delivered on all or most of the goals described. (Not every goal can or should be addressed in a logo, it could get ugly). Raúl provided us with a perfectly detailed information on what he stood for on both his blog and company. He had a clear view of his stands and that provided us with the background needed to commence our designing journey.

Research. We looked all over the internet and books to find those logos that other talented designers accomplished for diverse clients. Not only did we not want to end up having something similar, we wanted to improve everything. We stalked Raul’s Twitter, blog and company page. We watched how he interacted with others. How he expressed his thoughts on every post. How his honesty, depth and humble knowledge was always put forth for anyone that needed his counsel. We had plenty of material to get going. We needed inspiration, and we got it.

Sketches. Lots of sketches. A long time ago, we learned (the hard way) that designing should always begin (and sometimes end) in the drawing table. So we started creating in analog until we had a few winner designs that needed some adjustments in the computer. We then turned digital.

Digital creation.  With our trusty Calle 13 record playing in the background (music always guides the mood of the art piece) we designed several options for each logo. After we were sure, that we had at least three alternatives that could stand up to anything, we made sure that they communicated Raul’s vision. We used the best visual metaphors and hidden meaning (the good kind), we could come up with. We presented our work.

Raú∫l Colón’s Blog: A block or concrete cube is a hard object that can carry almost any weight put on top of it. Besides that, if it is a tri-dimentional object, it shows depth, character. Traduced to a person, we can understand that the person which this logo represents, is strong, dependent, knowledgeable, and straight forward. The picked design was the bottom-right.

Part V.

Client feedback is crucial. And since Raúl is always honest, what we got was the best feedback ever. Surprisingly, not many changes were given to us. Some miscellaneous twitching and that was it. We had our two winning logos.