this video is for those who want to take their logo design career seriously and we're going to dive into areas of logo designing that many people Overlook or just simply don't know about and we're going to start by dispelling a myth what a logo isn't a lot of people think that a logo design should Express what the business or the brand does however this is a fallacy and it's not actually a rule take the Apple logo as an example it belongs to one of the most successful and iconic brands in human history but does this
brand sell apples no of course not and sure there is a story behind the logo design itself but the point here is that a good logo doesn't have to express or show what the business does essentially it's more about expressing certain emotions and giving a vibe to a specific group of people I.E the target audience and that is while acting as a memory hook the logo should be memorable enough to stick in the minds of the target audience it needs needs to appeal to a specific group of people and fall in line with their psychology
and that brings me on to the next point before you design anything you need to know who you're designing for and spoiler alerts it's not your client this next section is going to show you how to finally determine who your logo is going to be aimed at this is really really crucial and so you do need to follow this because if designers overlook this step their design is going to become kind of lost BAS basically I'm going to start things off with a secret hack that's going to get you moving in the right direction find
a direct competitor or similar business to your clients and make sure it's an active and successful business and once you've done that you can head over to the social media pages of those people and truly find out what kind of people are interacting with your clients's business or brand Twitter is really good for this because the bio on Twitter often tells us things like the age the profession and so on now if you look right here we're on Apple's X account well formerly known as Twitter and oddly enough they don't even have more than one
post but anyway i' digress if we come into this guy's bio right here someone who obviously follows Apple we can see that he's into technology and AI related stuff and he actually mentors people on things in a space looking around the bios of accounts linked to your client's Niche can actually give you a great idea of the sort of person you should be tailoring your logo designs for and it's a pretty f way to do that too now a huge part of Designing logos is actually mocking them up and presenting them to your clients and
I'm excited to show you a new product I've recently discovered that takes making those mockups to that next kind of level it's an online 3D visualization studio called Pro visual now this is an incredible web app where you can create 3D mockups with ease now it's got a wide ranging collection of pre-made 3D models a huge library of tech textures materials hdri environments and also backgrounds now you can customize and fine tune ready to use assets to make any visualization that you can think of pretty much and I found it really easy to pick up
and just use right out of the gate and you can make stunning personalized mockups in a matter of seconds bringing your design onto Pro visual is really simple and we can work with layers right inside prual as well and I actually really like how we can rotate our design all while looking fresh and clean throughout and as I said it's just really easy to change materials and environments with only a few clicks as far as mockup generation and creation goes this is not something I've seen before also in Pro visual there's a share button as
well which means you can share your creations and presentations with your clients your colleagues or even your friends and client pitching is a crucial part of the success rate of a logo designer and so with Pro visual you're able to Showcase your projects in the most attractive and effective way possible and let's not forget it doesn't require any downloading or software is right into your browser now everybody can try Prov visual for a 14-day free trial but you can get a 20% discount using my code Satori 20 all in uppercase letters and so to learn
more about Pro visual just go to that link in the description box below you won't be disappointed so in this section we need to identify their personality their values the interested Hobbies lifestyle and attitude just to quickly demonstrate let's say your client owns an organic juice business we're going to make what's called a psychographic so we can fully understand how the customers of this business think what makes them worry what they want and so on this normally would take a lot of research but luckily these days we have resources like chat GPT it's actually insanely
powerful and as you can see here we have information about their possible lifestyle that being health conscious active focused on the environment and so on kind of typical things someone who drinks organic juice might adhere to their values and beliefs also follow on from that and you really shouldn't underestimate how important and Powerful this information is to you as a logo designer I would pay close attention to the points about their goals and also their paying points so here they read labels on food products they like follow a plant-based diet or something closely related and
they find it frustrating that they can't find sustainable organic products but get this I didn't ask chat GPT for any help in applying this information to a possible design but at the bottom here it does actually give a few bullet points and how we might use this information on a logo design and look here at the very foot of my results it actually confirms what I've been saying today tailoring a logo design with a psychographic profile can help the design and the brand connect with a target audience effectively by addressing their values their needs and
their aspirations so you have your audience Persona nailed down and you researched your client and the industry and so now you can begin to make Concepts based around that body of research and here are some really important things to keep in mind when you are making your Concepts and your design ideas look at your Concepts and then try to find at least one way that concept reflects an emotion or feeling in your target audience from your research you should know exactly what kind of emotions you want to evoke in the target audience let's take a
look at the lion concept from the in banking logo this concept was meant to mean that the company does everything in its power to secure the saving deposits of its clients why because the symbol of a lion is powerful it's wise and it can suggest protection this concept relates back to making the user of the bank feel safe and secure with their money here's Master card's double circle logo the double circle suggests East and West coming together as one but what shapes psychologically suggest togetherness well that's circular and oval shapes and then you have Adidas's
logo which has a three-step pyramid and that uses shape psychology not once but twice firstly slanted lines suggest forward movements which is great for a sports brand and then the triangle shape they make suggests strength and power which is another great suggestion for a sports brand so ask yourself does your logo design concept relate back to the emotional response in a target audience the next rule is that in your research phase to have at least three keyword pairs although I do suggest more but you should have one pair for the target audience one pair for
the Brand's motto or mission statement and one for the Brand's industry if you've done your research properly this should be easy but what does that actually look like one really great example of this in action would be the innocent smoothie logo the logo designer or designers could have researched the brand and taken word pairs from there like innocent or Genuine from there perhaps the concept of a Halo to represent the innocent parts and then a handdrawn simple logo to represent the genuine parts could have materialized and genuine in the sense that it's less corporate and
more approachable this is how we can generate Concepts simply from relevant keywords in our process next it's the Brand's mission statement or their motto an example would be Apple's motto which is bringing the best user experience to customers through Innovative Hardware software and services a word pair for this could have been Innovative experience and this next session is going to look at how logo designers can still come into problems in their logo design process but importantly how to fix those problems the first problem that I see many beginner and many intermediate designers doing is that
they have overly busy logo designs and here's a classic example it's a construction logo where the designer has gone wild and basically just created a digital illustration rather than a logo design the color choices are pretty good though more about color later but this design is too hectic and it's too busy to ever be iconic or memorable it's just way too easy to forget this logo and it's not going to hook into the minds of the target audience so what we can do is to vastly simplify the design down to something like this design right
here the Arrow does suggest a change of movement and we have an easily recognizable and simple iconic building house this design will be absorbed by the viewers in a matter of milliseconds which is in comparison to the previous design which is just way too chaotic to be absorbed the new design is so iconic that it probably works just fine without the logo type and as a standalone logo Mark in fact it probably works better like this the next mistake that logo designers sometimes make is that they have a kind of inappropriate design that they don't
even realize sometimes that is inappropriate sure you might laugh at these designs that edge on the confrontational side of things but imagine if you were a business owner and the designer you've been paying money for comes back with something like this you probably won't find it that funny then these designs are pretty funny though yeah this designer has taken some of the notoriously inappropriate designs and remade them a great example is this Oriental design that has been remastered perfectly also notice how the design respects the first logo fix that we looked at earlier simplification the
logo just uses a single color and it's an iconic stamped design so do remember to keep in mind the target audience and question if not the design is going to appeal to them or if it's going to rub them up the wrong way so to speak like a lot of these inappropriate logos surely will the third logo design problem that needs to be fixed is something I see everywhere these days and that is the logotype not matching the logo symbol this means the style of the typography does not match the vibe or the feeling of
the logo and this will confuse the target audience and leave the logo looking pretty unprofessional we do want professional logos of course this example of a tech logo uses a playful and organic font which totally goes against what a tech audience probably relates to they like something modern something less organic and more professional I also couldn't help tilting the logo Mark just to see how it would look and turn out and these aren't my designs by the way if you're worried that your design is guilty of this then go back to the brief and study
the target audience write down words and phrases that relate to their wants their needs and their emotions and then match those words to specific Styles or type face it's just an easy way to create a winning combination when you're working on Logo designs the next mistake that we're going to see how to fix is a really big pet peeve of mine as a designer and that is the literal logo designs you know the story by now light bulbs for electricians books for libraries or in this case here a bike for a mountain bike brand how
uninspiring does this design look jeez sure it's a pretty cool illustration but as an iconic logo it does nothing more than Fall Into Obscurity and blend into the background of forgettable designs now to overcome this you need to think outside of the box and really just get creative now to do that you need to work hard on making word pairs based on your logo design research generate words that relate to the brand the industry sector and the target audience and then generate some interesting pairs Silverback is a great example of a logo in the mountain
biking world and we don't see a mountain or a bike at all however the iconic design works well and it is memorable the logotype is slanted to give the illusion of motion and speed so yeah this is a pretty well thought out design with no literal connotations whatsoever then we have color and boy oh boy this one can be tough there are a few different approaches you can take when it comes to choosing the correct color for your logo Maybe we can do what the designers did for the Ikea or Ikea logo design they noted
how important the origin of the brand is to their story that being Sweden and so the logo uses the colors of the Swedish flag or you could just simply look at the industry that your client or the company you're designing for is in and then see what kind of colors are the norm for logo designs and so here for Branding we see a lot of the blue and red being used so you can choose a color scheme based around that to play it safe or choose a color scheme that contrasts that to make the brand
stand out you could also just think about the kind of feeling you want to evoke with your logo and then apply Color accordingly FedEx wants to emphasize a fast delivery service and so an action related color of orange works well and that's contrasted with a calming color of purple which does give it that kind of professional touch so you've arrived at a stage where your design is pretty much finished so you think but the next stage is arguably the most important stage of all it is the presentation of your design ideas and your Concepts to
your client and here are some really good ways to approach just that firstly the client should be reminded of what a logo design is and what makes a good logo design the logo should be timeless it's simple and it's not the brand but an extension of the brand and so on reminding them of the logo design principles and what makes a good logo design it would actually help to limit the amount of subjective input they have or they think they can have so maybe kick off the presentation by quickly demonstrating three to five key attributes
that make up a successful logo design and why they are important yet the most important thing to do is to remind the client of the problem that they have it's that thing they hired you for in the first place so early on in the presentation maybe talk about the goals of the project so it could be something like your logo is going to help the brand cut out to their own space within the nich sector or it might be something like it's going to help them compete with their main competitor at this point in the
project you should know all of the project goals inside out the next trick that goes down really well with clients is the brand color split screen when your slideshow or PDF presentation actually gets to the section where you show the logo designs start off with a brand color split screen now if your client has a very strong brand identity then they will have a main color for the identity so have half of the screen in that color and with the logo in White on top of it and then the other side in White and the
logo of their brand color clients typically strongly believe in their brand and so this slide or page in your presentation will often resonate really well with them and from here you can go on to show you know the logo in different mock-ups and situations but it's really important or really good to start with that split screen brand identity here's the next thing that I noticed that really helps create conversation and kind of broke the ice in a presentation show the logo in unique and cool situations via mockups now what I mean by this is to
have the logo on say a pen make a badge with the logo on and just show interesting situations where it's being used not only does this help them visualize the real use case scenarios of the logo it makes the pitch less cold and it adds more of a human element into it which clients seem to really respond well to so the next thing that really gets a resounding yes from clients when it comes to presenting your logos or your Concepts is to show how your logo will interact with the target audience for example if the
logo is a clothing brand show the target audience of that brand interacting with the logo add into your presentation that the logo will appeal to this group of people and also why not only will this make your design idea stronger but it helps to bring the client away from my own bias and then of course try to remind them the logo isn't for them but it's for the people who interact with a brand the presentation of your logo is an art form in of itself being able to sell your design ideas is often more important
than the actual design or equally so and of course if you want to learn yet more graphic design goodness just click that video on screen but until next time guys design your future today peace