wait,do I?

In my opinion – Anything you want! Realistically I would just kick back to RESEARCH the company and its demographic. Is the company a cell phone company? Is it a tech service? Do they sell hot dogs? Starting there and looking around the market to see what’s already been done will really help – it helps me.

For instance, if I were to make a logo for a soda [soft drink] company… I’d google “Soda” and take a look around the image room. That guy over there is GREEN with bulbous text. That guy over there has cursive writing and a red label on the can. That guy over there has an in-your-face feel. A lot of them seem to have a CRISP look about them. Whatever the case may be you can get a general sense of the ENERGY that’s involved in the branding of that KIND of company by googling it.

Half the work will already be done for you by checking out the competition. I mean, let’s face it – everyone is influenced by someone else to an extent. And if you’re not, then you didn’t read this blog anyway, you’re a genius, and you’re most likely living on a Tibetan mountain top with your computer tele-kinetically hovering above your lap. The rest of us have to do our homework.

> he creator is completely unhelpful and likes being vague
> on what he likes and dislikes in logos.

That’s fine! This probably means he’d say something like, “Oh I don’t know exactly what I want… That’s why I hired YOU.” In this case – SWEET! Make whatever you want [as long as it has the same FEEL that his demographic is looking for] and present it in a way that lets him know it’s the best out there. Like I said, if you can’t convince yourself that this is the best logo for your client, then you can’t convince anyone.

Otherwise, maybe he’s being vague because he hasn’t really found/seen anything he likes yet. Maybe he doesn’t really know what he wants because he hasn’t done his homework and maybe he doesn’t really care. All of that, in my mind, is actually good too. Even though you might feel like you’re being led by the blind, this is where you get to exercise your creative liberty.

Let me clarify what I mean by “Feel”… I was in the grocery store one day and I was looking for pasta. Simple, normal, angel-hair pasta. I was looking around the isle and ran across all the usual suspects until BAM, a package design hit me square in the face. It was a white box with pastel colors on it and a pretty picture of the pasta, cooked with sauce on it. And I couldn’t tell you how unappetizing that looked.

Why was I so grossed out by this box? Then it hit me- Every box or bag on that shelf lent itself to dark colors and earthy tones. All the pasta packaging on that shelf, other than this white one, had a recognizable feel. The packages were all supporting the roots of this pasta or its pre-established brand. Earthy greens, dark and heavy blues, LOTS of brown and LOTS of red. Some of the packages had land-scapes of Italy [or what I imagined to be Italy].

But this white one? Ugh. Boring. Too sterile. It had no… FEELING. There’s nothing behind it that sparked my nostalgia. Your LOGO is that company’s package design, if-you-will. Yes, yes, you DO run that risk of becoming “unnoticed” and sure, SOME people DO love that boring, ugly white box with pastel ugliness on it for their pasta. But I’d rather play it safe than sorry.

Another quick example: Cingular logo. What the HELL is that thing? No one knows, and no one knew. When it came out that they were a cell phone company, everyone understood, and no one walked away. Looking at it now, with company’s like AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile… Cingular’s logo fits right in. It’s an odd little “Splat” but it works. Now what if Cingular had a logo that looked similar to the Puma logo- Complete with the kitty and all. Google it, I’ll wait….

Yeah right. No WAY would that fly as a mobile logo. Puma’s text “Puma” could be a cool font/logo for a brand of TV or Recording Tape [like Maxwell]. But I couldn’t see this being a good Mobile logo.

This is one of those things that happens to be very difficult to explain to most clients, or yourself. You just have to do the research, absorb what you can, and spit out something with that FEEL in order to be accepted among its peers. Making a logo that’s accepted but also stands out… THAT’s the tricky part.

cCc

Also, the creator is completely unhelpful and likes being vague on what he likes and dislikes in logos. ARGH.