As some of you may know, I have done a little logo work this past year not only for myself, but for clients too! My most recent work of art is for my brand Stupid Easy™ which will launch in the fall. I designed the finished logo while making notes of the process along the way. Those notes are what I want to share here with you today. Below you will find out more about why your logo matters and just how important it is to take your time and use your resources.
You spend so much time designing the logo.
- What font and color should I use?
- Does it look good full length?
- Does it work better stacking the words?
- Where should the icon go? Do I even need an icon?
And of course you’re thinking a million things at the same time
- Oh I like that! what if….?
- Oh let me try moving this over here.
- Now that’s off.
- What if I move it here?
And the conversation keeps going. Next thing you know you’ve spent 3 hours on your logo with multiple versions and still no clue which one you want. Then you reach out to your family, friends, and dare I say social media. Show them the options (less is more) and ask which one they like. Bonus if you can get them to dive deeper and tell you why they like or don’t like.
Once you get that feedback, you go back to the drawing board to make your tweaks. Then you are faced with more versions. Take a step back and let it marinate. Take a break. Walk away. Then come back to it on another device if you can (different screens help) and see what you think. Most of the time you end up eliminating an option or 2. Then you can survey your people again.
Yes, this is a process. Yes, it takes lots of time. And yes, that’s why it’s expensive to have someone design a logo for you.
STOP. Right now you’re thinking – did Ed really just suggest paying someone after he just went through this whole spiel about the steps involved in designing your own logo?
Yep! Sometimes you hire someone to do everything that I just wrote…and more. I’m creative and can do logos but this time around, I needed some inspiration. So I hired someone to help me kick it off. Believe it or not I found a great designer on Fiverr my first time around which was nice! After describing what I do and what I was thinking I received a logo within 5 days. That sparked conversations with friends on Facebook, lead to alterations, and then finally me designing my own which is what I went with.
In order, here is what I got from the amazing designer from Fiverr (slide 1) which sparked my creativity and in Canva I was able to create these several revisions (all the slides that follow) before settling on the last version. And thanks to many of you who helped me as you weighed in on what worked and what didn’t. This was truly a team effort.
Don’t look at hiring someone as a bad thing because it’s an added expense. It could be just the thing you need to move forward.