Education, Graphic Design

Assignment 03.05: Logo Generation and Process

Jason W. Howell
February 17, 2024

Goal

The pri­mary goal of the assign­ment is to explore the brain­storm­ing, research, cre­ative process and design think­ing nec­es­sary to gen­er­ate pro­to­type logos for typ­i­cal com­pa­nies. The sec­ondary goal if this assign­ment is to study the intri­ca­cies of sym­bol and logo design, includ­ing semi­otics, abstrac­tion, fig­ure-ground rela­tion­ships, and adaptability. 

Objective

The objec­tive of this assign­ment is to cre­ate a logo through a process of refine­ment. Develop a con­cept for the logo the directs the even­tual brand­ing. Cre­ate sev­eral ver­sions on paper, and elim­i­nate or mod­ify these ver­sions to cre­ate the best solu­tion possible.

Background Reading

Guidelines

Process

Sketching

Color Psychology

Color Theory

Assignment

Please choose three com­pa­nies from the list, simul­ta­ne­ously explor­ing marks for each, with the idea that ulti­mately a final logo and solu­tion will be selected for a com­plete visual identity.

  • Per­sonal Choice
  • Auto Oasis (car)
  • Church of per­sonal choice
  • AMP Elec­tric (elec­tric)
  • Poe and Asso­ciates (engi­neers)
  • Fence Co. (fence)
  • Green Hill Memo­r­ial Gar­den (funeral)
  • Tulsa Over­head Door, LLC (garage)
  • Green Acre Sod Farms (grass)
  • Cat­nip Cot­tage (ken­nels)
  • Metro Machine Works (Machine)
  • Bruner’s Old Time Meat Mar­ket (meat markets)
  • TNT Secu­rity Ser­vices, LLC (secu­rity)
  • Win­dow World of Tulsa, Inc (win­dows)
  • Preaus Land­scape (land­scap­ing)
  • TRC Dis­as­ter Solu­tions (restora­tion)

Part One

Good logo design starts with a dis­cov­ery stage. Brain­storm and col­lect you inspi­ra­tion. Try to develop as much as pos­si­ble on “paper” via sketch before going to the com­puter. Think­ing always shows through in logo design. Doc­u­ment every­thing you pro­duce. Brain­storm five (5) con­cepts for your cho­sen com­pa­nies. Think as diverse as pos­si­ble, though at least one of the con­cepts must be a typo­graphic solu­tion. Research any nec­es­sary visual mate­r­ial for ref­er­ence. Align dis­cov­ery words with  type treat­ments, fonts, shapes and colors. 

Start col­lect­ing things that might be of value. Where and what you choose is impor­tant, so limit temp­ta­tion to find stock or auto­mated work that does not align with  the dis­cov­ery stage. If some­thing is note­wor­thy, return to the dis­cov­ery stage to make sure it is. Explore shapes, start geo­met­ric shapes only, shape addi­tions, sub­trac­tions, etc, move to organic. Also explore shapes are related to mean­ing, ie sym­bolic shapes, for con­nec­tions between the two.

Fin­ish by cre­at­ing con­nec­tions by sketch­ing between these con­cepts. Choose the best three com­bined sketches for each com­pany. Think about alter­nat­ing, replac­ing, pat­tern­ing, and sim­pli­fy­ing the shapes to align with. To Quote one design edu­ca­tor “Make con­nec­tions, Think fig­u­ra­tively, Go lit­eral, Get weird, Gen­er­ate, Eval­u­ate, Repeat.” Select color sym­bol­ism, pick a range of col­ors, but don’t be overly con­cerned with choos­ing the “per­fect” color yet.

Cre­ate a “mood board” or basic PDF for each com­pany to doc­u­ment your efforts and sub­mit to the appro­pri­ate CMS dropbox.

Part Two

Cre­ate ten (10) sketches on paper for each com­pany to explore vari­a­tions and con­cepts for each. Start draw­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­ples of your ideas, using every­thing you have col­lected thus far. Do not progress to fin­ish, or per­fect, com­puter work yet. Keep it sketch ori­ented, even if using a dig­i­tal pro­gram or device to cre­ate drawings.

In a fun­nel-like man­ner, com­bine the most intrigu­ing marks with each other to refine sym­bols to a at least three solu­tions for each com­pany. Con­cen­trat­ing both visu­ally and con­cep­tu­ally, keep in mind the design prin­ci­ples of Gestalt, con­trast, pat­tern, etc.

Sub­mit sketches for assess­ment to the appro­pri­ate CMS drop­box as a PDF.

Part Three

Start the process in the com­puter. Use the sketch­ing and exploratory work to nar­row down the selec­tions. Cre­ate three (3) ver­sions for each com­pany in the com­puter in black and white only (no grey). Eval­u­ate your results and refine your sketches dig­i­tally for each com­pany as many times as nec­es­sary to achieve an ideal solu­tion. Remem­ber, black and white solid shapes. No gra­di­ents or tints at this point.

Com­bine three marks into two. Finally, com­bine the two marks into a sin­gle one. Present the three logos, and the three com­bined logo solu­tions for each com­pany using the tem­plate provided.

Sub­mit the logo com­bi­na­tions for each com­pany for assess­ment to the appro­pri­ate CMS drop­box as a PDF.

Assessment

  • The fol­low­ing rubric posted on D2L will deter­mine exer­cise score: Assign­ment Grad­ing and Assign­ment 03.05: Logo Development

Techniques

Cre­ativ­ity, brain­storm­ing, plan­ning, exper­i­men­ta­tion, file hier­ar­chy, struc­ture, nam­ing conventions

Supplies

Paper, pen­cil, appro­pri­ate soft­ware, pho­tog­ra­phy source, USB drive, mis­cel­la­neous mate­ri­als, tem­plate files

Deadlines

As defined by cor­re­spond­ing cal­en­dar item, drop­box, dis­cus­sion or con­tent topic description.