So your client wants an amazing logo and you’re determined to provide your best effort. You get a fresh number 2 ready, throw down the big notepad, roll up your sleeves and go at it until you deem one or two things worthy. However, you step back , show your wondering feline in hopes of any encouraging sentiment yet scornfully met with that predictable bleak response, “Um, it just doesn’t Pop.” “Wait…?”
From our experience, if you don’t take the proper measures to guide your client through the branding phase, you will undeniably find the exact sentiment with your client ; minus the fur and the scratch post. The company owner will be sure to remind you how much the process is costing and how there is no more room in the budget to pay you for revisions. So as a designer, you’re stuck wanting to provide a progressive solution, wrapping it up and not providing your best work, or the job goes to the competition.
Next time you or your fellow designers decide to take on an identity for a client, I say, take the following steps.
Meet the Client (Preferably In Person) - Getting an understanding of your client’s expressive manner (or demeanor) can lend to a successful foundation before any development has started. Now, you may say be thinking, what does the logo have to do with the client’s character? You don’t care what they eat , watch on TV, or even their favorite place in the world; your the professional, you just want to know their favorite colors and get started on that smorgasbord of ideas. Big mistake, if you don’t take the half hour to allow the client to express themselves, your off to a very impersonal start to something that will become very personal. Brand loyalty must start from the personal attention given to the source, otherwise, what’s the point?
Vocal Q & A - Create a series of questions that range from being literal about the logo to some more creative and off the cuff. Most clients will provide you a list of expectations with no real filtering and you should welcome that stream of conscious thought. Some clients will get stuck or won’t provide enough so having a question or two that asks something like: What are some adjectives to describe your new logo?, What are some inspiring places in the world?, really gets the creative process moving. Allowing the client to be expressive is key, filtering should come later when you’re in the design phase.
Provide Initial Presentation - A key element of presenting the initial concept isn’t what you show but how you show the client. Don’t spend the time in planning the logo and whisking up about a years worth of logos only to present a handful of designs on a single page and on a sterol white background to boot. Take your top contenders and always show more than one, but less than” too many”. We’ll leave it to you to decide what’s “too many”, but seriously, anything more than four is exhausting. Present your individual logos each on a complementary and simple backdrop that allows the client to briefly visualize the potential of the proposed brand. Small attention to detail will prevent a series of revisions. I don’t guarantee there won’t be a revision, it’s just the difference of having one or two versus six or eight.
Takes Notes and Stay Invested - So the client likes the direction but would like to see some of their recent ideas incorporated into the brand. Be sure to take those notes as well as the notes from your initial meeting. The important part is that if you feel 100% positive in the logos you’ve presented, always using the clients notes as reasons for why you did or did not do something lets the client know you pay attention, had them in mind, and in most cases deems a smoother process during a revision or may sound convincing enough that the client will approve the initial logo after all.
An unavoidable stereotype designers will always face is that we’re always trying to steer the ship in our favor and that we don’t care what the client thinks; simply not true. We should never deny we get invested in a branding piece; your should be clear that you would like the most relative and convincing product to move forward. Taking advantage of client notes will help convince the client away from that mid 90’s clip art mentality and into a nice san-serif with type-face an organic insignia that should scale for years to come.
Be Firm Yet Professional - The more you interface with clients the more one realizes they’re never the same. Some will choose an identity with their eyes closed, in a dark room, and be certain it’s the right one. Others will endlessly split hairs on the positioning of some particular element of the design and have you revising into the next wave of branding. The best practice once the revisions have become too much to follow is to be warm, accurate, and firm. Let the client know how important it must be for them to find the right identity that tells their story. Stress that if they exceed to be well known, established, and convincing, it will strictly come in time.
Though phasing out a concept has been around since man carved stories in caves, the relevance in their symbolism naturally came in time. Though something as poetic won’t mean much to your next client, it never hurts to have an understanding that a great foundation comes with a proven process.
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