Business logo designs: Briefing a designer

In a previous article on business logo designs I wrote about making an effective logo. If your business needs a new identity, here are some tips on briefing your graphic designer.

A highly successful soloist I know moved her business premises from one state to another. She wanted to combine the launch of her new business premises with a launch of an upgraded logo. Her graphic designer hadn’t followed her brief and the result was a logo she didn’t want to use. The frustration – and financial cost – was palpable.

Here are a few tips to prevent this from happening to you when briefing a designer on your business logo designs.

Give a long brief!

When enlisting the services of a graphic designer to create your logo, ensure that your brief is detailed with what you think your market wants and needs. It’s critical to remember you need business logo designs your market will respond to, not you personally.

Naturally it is important to be comfortable with your logo, but don’t think that it should be purple because it’s your favourite colour. Think about what might symbolise your business best and what your target market is most likely to respond to.

Write down the brief

For best results when briefing a designer, write down your brief. It should include answers to the following:

What is your service/product?
Who is your market? List demographics like: age, income and geographic area.
Who is your competition and what makes you different from them?
How will the logo be used? Letterhead, website, signage, stickers for packaging, ink stamps, pens, t-shirts, billboard or television.
Are you likely to need other business logo designs for partners to your business?
Do you want your business to be perceived as gentle or strong?
Does your market need a real relationship with you or just a quick solution?
What sort of colours would reflect the nature of your business? Why?
Is a sense of long history more important that a fresh, young contemporary feel?
Do you want your name to be the whole logo or do you want a graphic to appear alongside your name?
Should your business name appear in uppercase, sentence case or all lowercase? Why?
If you already have a logo, what are the elements that are already successful and what do you want to change? Why?

When you are briefing a designer, they might ask you these kinds of questions, but many don’t. Even if yours does, it’s easier to address these aspects on your own prior to the meeting, so that more detailed discussions can ensue.

If you have any visual ideas, sketch them. It doesn’t matter if you think you can’t draw as any indication is further information for your graphic designer.

It’s also helpful to copy and paste business logo designs from websites of your competition, so the graphic designer knows how to differentiate your business from theirs.

Consider asking the graphic designer to present the layout of your letterhead, compliment slips and business cards, so you can see how the logo works in context with your collateral.

Gathering as much information as possible in advance before briefing a designer not only helps with initial discussions, it also assists with potential negotiations later if the designer has strayed off the brief. So be painstakingly detailed, throw all your thoughts down, even if you want new ideas from the designer.

In my next article, I will give you advice on how to respond to your graphic designer’s business logo design drafts to ensure you get what you want.

Megan Hills is a freelance writer and editor who enjoys helping others be engaging and understood. Through her marketing, publicity and graphic design nous, she can maximise the power of what you want to communicate to the people you want to reach.

12 comments | Add your own 1 2 | Next» View all»

Hi Megan - I'm a believer in loud and proud!! On a more prosaic level, I think people should always remember that the screen colours can look radically different on paper, and different papers can affect the visual colours and inks Vs toner printers.............etc Grant Hyman - salescentral from Sydney
A scenario familiar to myself. The designer was thrilled and excited to disclose what they thought was an exciting concept. My muted response resulted in a need to mend a creative deflated ego. Personally, I think the need for a logo is over rated... soloists need to have the confidence to construct a business identity based on their own trial and error. A logo a corporate identity doth not make. Catherine White from Sydney
Nice to see an article on design Megan.
As a designer, My Incredibly Useful Tool is a 'creative brief'. Basically a 'word document template, with all the relevant questions and prompts for filling in the answers. It allows clients to stop, think, focus, condense the info, sign off internally and send it back. This process usually includes a couple of calls asking "have you done it yet"!
Cheers,
Carl. Carl Sherriff from Sydney | Read my articles
How many times does it happen! And is the fault with the designer or the customer?
As designers, we try to extract all of the information from the customer about what they want in their design.
It is important that you as the customer tells us exactly what your thinking; even if you think it might be silly or stupid - we would rather know what you want then what you think we want you to say - and that way we are both happy.
-Jess, www.zulugraphics.com.au Jess from Zulu Graphics, Newcastle
I agree with most of this, and could add a few more items to the brief, but any GOOD designer should ask the client for these things as part of the briefing process.
I don't agree with directing the process with these questions: "Do you want your name to be the whole logo or do you want a graphic to appear alongside your name?
Should your business name appear in uppercase, sentence case or all lowercase? Why?" That's for the designer to determine, and justify. If I was directed that much I would not want the client as it would indicate they were closed to my ideas.
And I don't understand this "Does your market need a real relationship with you or just a quick solution? " - building a proper relationship with your market, however temporary, is essential. Jonathan Nolan from Sydney, Australia
I agree with discussing everything and sharing your own ideas and scribbles with the designer, but allow the designer to put forth their suggestions as well. Not that long ago - before computers - we had page layout artists, commercial artists, concept artists, and finished artists together with typesetters. Each had their own role to play. There were also photo lettering artists.
Now, there are mainly two divisions which many people get confused: Desktop Publishers and Graphic Designers. Desktop Publishers focus on page layout combining elements including pictures, graphics and text on a page. Graphic design practice embraces a range of cognitive skills, aesthetics and crafts, including typography, visual arts and page layout. A good graphic designer includes training in all those disciplines and incorporates their skills into creating good design including good and balanced logos. Many desktop publishers do not have that training and tend to create a logo that does not balance all the elements and use bad choices of fonts. (And, yes there are some people who say they are designers and are not.) Many good graphic designers also have excellent drawing skills and can design and illustrate both on paper and on the computer. Examples of bad typography and bad combinations of fonts or constant use of capitals are everywhere, as well as examples of bad logos. A good logo should be able to stand on it's own - and be able to scale and be legible as small as 1cm and as high as a building if necessary. This creates design challenges that good training and skills will overcome to create something very special. I also agree that colours are a continuing difficulty - my colours are proofed to print proofs and the monitor is print calibrated, but they are always different to client's computer colours which are not colour calibrated. If you wish to use a particular colour, then providing your designer with a paint swatch is a good idea so it can be matched as closely as possible for print - bearing in mind that it will not look the same on your computer. The computer uses RGB (red, green, blue) and is based on colour prisms and reflected light. Print processes uses CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black) and the absorption of the paper affects the density of the colour print. This thereby affects the colours again. The author also brings up a good thought - a logo is not a corporate identity, which is a separate issue. It is incorporated into that identity as part of the overall look, but a logo is always separate and can evolve over time. A good example is how the Coca Cola logo has changed over time. Karen from Springwood

12 comments | Add your own 1 2 | Next» View all»

Add Your comments

Preview comment

Name

Website *

Town / city and country

Email (never sold, displayed or given away)

* This will link your name to your site. So please avoid self promotion elsewhere! We delete spam, disrespectful or off-topic comments.