How to design a logo - Part 2

This is Part 2 of the series. To go to Part 1, click here.


Sketch It Out - Getting Started: Before you even open your trusty sidekick image editor, grab a pencil, and make some rough drafts on paper, adding, deleting, and modifying details. If you are not that great at sketching, it doesn’t matter, since the final version will be made on a computer anyway. If you are not able to draw something out, just draw a rough placeholder, and write it there, so you can see how it looks when you actually get to using the sketch on the computer.

Sketch It Out – Weight Distribution/Symmetry: Some people do this step before the first draft of the logo is made, but I like to do it after the first few initial versions. Make a rough co-ordinate system on your page, consisting of an X and Y axis (a horizontal line, and a vertical line). Take your best draft, and try drawing it on that co-ordinate system, with the centre of your logo being where the X and Y axis intersect. I feel this really puts things in perspective as far as distribution of the logo goes. Just by drawing your logo on 2 lines, you can get a feel for vertical and horizontal symmetry, as well as the focal point of your logo (the focal point is where the person looking at a logo is most drawn to). At this stage, you should make more drafts using the guidelines, and try to distribute your logo according to where you want the focus of the logo to be, and how you want the weight to be distributed about that focal point.

The red lines represent the guidelines, and the blue target is the focal point. Start it off nice and centred, and then change it around as required.

Logo Analysis: If the last section on weight distribution was a bit too much to understand, hopefully this will make it clearer. (Following logos are for representation purposes only, I do not own any of them).

            This is one of the most popular logos of the internet age. As you can see, it has a fairly straightforward vertical as well as horizontal symmetry. The focal point is where your eyes usually go to first, the two o’s.

            Keep in mind, most corporate logos follow this scheme of keeping it nice and simple, where the guidelines are not offset by a huge amount, and there is still a fair bit of symmetry going on.

            Here are a few more logos which follow a similar trend.

            Logos which are made for entertainment purposes on the other hand, have much more dynamic guidelines. Since there is usually no need for the logo to look clean and proper, you can usually get away without putting in a lot of symmetry.

            As you can see, band logos do not follow the same rules as more official logos. Actually speaking, this logo has no particular focal point, but if you look at it a few times, you will notice how one falls where I’ve marked it.

            The logo of Lamb of God shown above is actually something of an exception. Usually, band logos follow a strong symmetry about a vertical axis (that is, the left and right sides of an image are similar), though more and more people are breaking out of that trend now-a-days.

            The logo of this music company has a pretty straightforward axis, but notice how the upper part of the logo is in perspective, and not flat. That adds a sense of depth to the logo, and sometimes proves to be an interesting effect. Since we are all beginners here, we will stay away from perspective designs, as they are much, much harder to make.

            At the end of these steps you should have a fairly good draft. If you are happy with it, move on to the next part, which is the digitizing of the logo. Almost done! 

Onward to Part 3!