A Glimpse Into the Process: Logo Design

When Sara and I sat down for our first meeting about the COMMference, we realized we had a lot of work ahead of us. We made an four month schedule and then realized what we needed first was new a name and then a new logo.

As a typeface obsessed, creative-type, wanna-be designer, I was given the second task.  My initial reaction was to freak out, obviously.  I have designed many posters, fliers and t-shirts but a logo, that’s serious work.

My only instructions were create something. I started my creative process by thinking of words that I wanted people to associate with the logo and with the event.

Bold

Modern

Simple

Connection

Identity

Communication

I doodled a few ideas and then headed to my favorite place on campus, the Mac lab. Every artist’s process is different but mine always starts with sketches (mostly during class, oops) and then lots of online research. I spend a lot of time perusing around design sites looking at color schemes, typefaces, business cards and logos.

I think the best logos are simple, distinct and find the essence of the message. I started looking at the letter C (for COMMference and communication) and thought about a way to break this up into parts.  These parts would symbolize the many facets of communication: student media, public relations, advertising, journalism, rhetoric and forensics.

I came up with six logo drafts and then discussed them with Sara and Dr. Y. We made a few minor changes to the one we all like the best (make the COMM capital instead of lowercase, adding the grammatical apostrophe) and then we had our logo.

But how did we choose what colors to use? Come back next week to find out…