Having a Logo Developed: Process, Variants and Files

Process

1. Briefing: Business, customers, competition, likes and dislikes.
2. Drafts: Different directions to choose from.
3. Refinement: The chosen direction is polished, tested and turned into variants.
4. Handover: Files, colour values, fonts and guidance on how to use them.

Which variants you need

• Main logo (horizontal and stacked)
• Short form or symbol for small areas
• Single-colour and reversed version
• Social media format

What to look out for

The logo must stay legible when small, work in black and white and be distinguishable from the competition. Ask beforehand which files and usage rights you will receive.

The briefing: which questions it should settle

A good briefing answers, before anything is drawn, what the logo is supposed to achieve. Typical questions: What does the company stand for, and for whom? Where will the logo be shown most often, for example on a vehicle, on invoices or as a small icon on social networks? Which logos in the competition do your customers know? A logo that barely differs from all the others in the industry is hard to remember, even if it is technically well made.

Logo types at a glance

• Wordmark: The name as designed lettering. Suits short, punchy names.
• Symbol: A symbol on its own. It only works once it is known, which is why new companies usually combine it with the name.
• Combination mark: Name and symbol together, the most common form.
• Emblem: Lettering enclosed within the symbol. It looks traditional but is hard to read at small sizes.

The practical test before sign-off

Before you approve a draft, test it under real conditions:

1. Shrink it to roughly the size of a profile picture and check that it is still recognisable.
2. Print it out in black and white.
3. Place it on a dark and on a coloured background.
4. Try it on a letterhead, a website header and a vehicle sketch.
5. Show it to two people outside the company and ask what they think when they see it.

Deciding how many drafts make sense

More drafts do not automatically mean better results. Two or three clearly different directions are usually enough for you to choose without getting lost. More important than the number is that each direction has a rationale: why this shape, this colour, this typeface? Ask for the reasoning, and check whether it suits your customers, not just your personal taste.

How to give feedback

Helpful feedback describes an effect (“looks too playful for our customers”) rather than dictating solutions (“make it 20 per cent bigger”). Collect opinions within the company beforehand and pass them on together. Contradictory individual opinions from different departments prolong the process and dilute the result.

Common mistakes

• Too much detail: Fine lines and gradients disappear at small sizes and are expensive to print.
• Trendy font without a licence: Fonts have their own terms of use. Check whether the font used is licensed for your purposes.
• Template from the internet: Logo templates bought online are often sold several times over and can hardly be protected as a trade mark.
• Thinking about files too late: If you only have a pixel file, you cannot print the logo large.

Files and rights

A proper package contains vector files (for example SVG or PDF) for print and scaling, pixel files in the usual sizes for web and social media, and the colour values for print and screen. Settle in writing which usage rights you receive and whether they are limited in time or territory. For questions on trade mark protection and copyright, legal advice is the right port of call; this article is not a substitute for it. How the logo fits into an overall system is described in Logo development.