LOGO DESIGN QUESTIONS?
You may be wondering what logo design questions you should ask your client before diving in. Failing to gather the right information in the early stages of design can lead to a messy (and much longer) logo design process. Then where do you start?
Let’s think of it in terms of cooking a meal for someone. If someone says “make me dinner” with no specifications (first of all, rude…), pretty much everything is left to the imagination. And, while that may sound quite freeing to have such a vast sandbox to play in, chances are you’re going to sink as if it’s filled with quicksand.
Are they in the mood for red meat or white? Land animals or seafood? Or are they vegetarian? What kind of flavor palettes to they like? Is there a type of cheese they love? Is there a vegetable they can’t stand? More importantly, do they have any food allergies?
You wouldn’t want to make an eccentric fusion dish for a meat-and-potatoes traditionalist. Similarly, you wouldn’t want to design an edgy, modern icon design for someone seeking an elegant, classic wordmark logo.
It’s just like G.I. Joe tried to teach us over and over again. Knowledge is power and knowing is half the battle.
THE BASICS
1) Is there a specific budget and/or deadline?
While not one of the more creative logo design questions, this one is important to know right off the bat. The size of the budget and the timeframe for completion are both critical factors in the overall result.
A low budget or a fast-approaching deadline will absolutely affect the logo design process, as it means less time and/or labor can for the project. Perhaps the effect is fewer logo revisions. Maybe it means the entire project is not worth your time. Getting these two basic logo design questions out of the way first is a must.
Some people don’t like asking about budgets. If this is your preference, be sure that the client is aware of (and accepts) your set prices before you begin. Either way, you don’t want to waste any of your or the client’s time you cannot agree on time/price.
2) What is the name of the company?
This one may sound too obvious even to mention, but the name of the company will tell you a lot about the logo you’re about to design.
Is the name short or long? Is the name one word or does it consist of multiple words? Can the name be turned into a monogram or anagram? Are there any colors, places, items, or other nouns within the name that evoke imagery? The name can often tell you a lot about the logo before you’ve even started any sketches.
If the company for which you’re about to design a logo is named “Purple Umbrella Brewery,” you’ve already learned a lot as to what the logo should be. There’s a color in the name. There’s an item in the name. There are three words to work with and, therefore, three initials you can also work with.
Thankfully, so many design options arise from this name alone: Abstract purple marks; Umbrella marks. Purple umbrella marks. Single-line wordmarks; Stacked wordmarks; PUB lettermarks; Not to mention all of the imagery associated with beer and breweries. What a goldmine!
(It’s almost as if it’s a contrived hypothetical business name crafted for the sole purpose of illustrating a perfect example)
However, we’re not even close to finished mining for information!
3) Does the company have a tagline or motto (and should it be included)?
Sometimes, including a company tagline or motto can help sell the larger branding aspects of the logo design you’re creating for your client. As far as logo design questions go, it’s always a good idea to ask if the client has any taglines in mind.
You can even offer to generate taglines and any other branding verbiage during the logo design process, if you know it is (or could be) a part of a larger company branding campaign.
In some cases, you and the client may decide to focus on a logo mark and branding campaign tagline (think “Just Do It” and the Nike swoosh). On the other hand, you and the client may also decide to let the taglines fall by the wayside and focus soley on core company logo branding.
It is important to know any taglines, mottos, and even mission statements before designing. Even if a client doesn’t want the slogan included in the logo, understanding a company’s mantra can give you more insight into the company’s image, personality, and public voice.
4) How would you describe the company’s products and/or services?
The way a person describes their company is significant. The words they use and how they use them can give you insight into how they see their company in their head.
This kind of information is pivotal to the logo design process. This basic, no-frills question will at least give you an idea of what all the company offers. Sometimes you can have fun with it, asking it a few different ways.
First, ask the client how they’d describe their company to a potential client at a morning coffee shop meeting. Then ask them how they’d describe their company to a stranger late night at a bar. Hell, ask them how they’d describe their business to their bumbling great grandparent.
Sometimes, a client may phrase something in a way that gives you a whole different perspective on their company than you originally had, so always listen to what the client has to say!
5) Who is the company’s target market?
A logo is a company’s most vital marketing tool. For that reason alone, you’re going to need to know who specifically you’re marketing to before you design a new logo.
18-to-24-year-old single college students are going to respond differently to certain design styles and aesthetics than 50+-year-old retired married couples. You have to know your market to advertise effectively.
If Purple Umbrella Brewery wants to market their beers to 30-something sports fans, the logo designs should reflect that. If one of your logo design questions asks about the company’s target market, you’ll know in advance not to waste your time designing for the wrong demographic.
6) Who are the company’s main competitors?
To design a truly effective logo, you need to know the competitive landscape in which it will be used. Seeing a company’s competitors will give you an idea of what they (and you) are up against.
Are there industry standards in terms of color, style, or fonts? Do you want the logo to lean into these standards to instantly associate itself with the industry, or should it break those conventions in favor of standing out and being unique within the industry?
More importantly, you don’t want to end up designing a logo that’s too similar to a competitor’s logo. Your client isn’t going to want to look like a cheap knock-off of their competition and I doubt the competition’s legal team would like that much either.
7) What are the company’s long term goals?
In a lot of ways, asking logo design questions can feel a lot like a job interview. “What are your strengths and weaknesses?” “What are your dreams and aspirations?” “Where do you see yourself in five years?”
The client’s answers, however, are extremely important. The logo you are about to design will represent their brand for the foreseeable future. Therefore, you need to know what future that company plans on having.
If you know that Purple Umbrella Brewery plans on eventually adding a pub and grill to their brewery, you know not to pigeonhole your design process into something that only works on a beer bottle label but doesn’t make sense on a restaurant menu.
If the president of P.U.B. tells you they want to take the brand nationwide by the time their kids have to go to college (I wonder why…), you know not to lean too heavily into any local imagery that may not translate well to a national marketplace.
If you design a logo well enough, it won’t need any changes as the company grows. Look at Coca Cola.
THE LOGO DESIGN
8) Where will the logo be primarily used?
One of the more technical logo design questions, this is a critical one because a lot of design decisions will depend on it. There are two main uses: Digital/Online and Physical/Print.
In Digital, you work in an RGB workspace. That stuff blasting you in the face from your computer monitor or cell phone screen right now (often called “light”) is considered “additive color.” Adding equal parts Red, Green, and Blue (RGB) gives us white light. Think “Dark Side of the Moon.”
However, in print, you design in a CMYK workspace. Ink and other pigments like paint are considered “subtractive color.” Certain ink colors absorb (or subtract) their opposing light colors and reflect the rest Equal parts of cyan, magenta, and yellow (CMY) absorb all light colors equally and result in a blackish tone (although separate black ink (K) is also used to ensure a true black during printing).
Starting in the right color space is more important than you might realize. RGB works with a brighter color gamut than CMYK and having to convert colors halfway through a project can be a pain, especially if a client has grown fond of a certain hue during the logo design process.
It is also important to note that, if the logo will be used in various printed materials, it will need to adhere to specific printing and production-related restrictions and regulations. Some machines can only cut letters for signage to a certain stroke thickness. Some printing processes bleed through at smaller resolutions.
Knowing how the logo will be used determines the level of detail, texture, styling, and other elements involved in the logo design process. You have to think about all the ways in which the logo will eventually be seen and used. Large and small scale, make sure your logo will work effectively.
9) What should the logo focus on?
If a company has multiple words in its name, which word or words should have the most emphasis? Should any of the words in your business’ full name be excluded from the logo representation? Maybe the emphasis shouldn’t be on the words at all but on the icon or lettermark instead.
Does Purple Umbrella Brewery want their logo to focus on the uniqueness of “Purple Umbrella” or on the underlying business at hand, “Brewery?” What if they don’t even want you to mention brewery in the logo?
Perhaps they’d prefer the logo focus on the lettermark and the cleverness of their anagram, PUB. Better yet, they might want an icon mark so instantly associable with their brand that you won’t even need a wordmark.
Speaking of which, you may have noticed me using words like “lettermark,” “wordmark,” and “icon mark.” What in sam hell are those things anyway?
10) How many of the following elements should the logo design contain?
More often than not, a company is going to need multiple variations of their logo for different scenarios.
However, this all starts with asking the client how many logo elements (and of what kind) they might want for their business logo.
The following are all of the different possible elements your logo can contain:
An Icon Mark is a non-text symbol that represents your business and brand. It can be several different types:
• A lettermark is a mark that contains a letter (or a few). These are things like the McDonald’s “M” or Home Box Office’s “HBO” logos.
• A pictorial mark uses a more literal image/symbol to represent the business. These are logos like Apple’s apple silhouette or the Windows window rectangles.
• An abstract mark is a more creatively-designed abstract symbol. Abstract mark logos examples include the Nike swoosh or the Pepsi wave.
A Wordmark is the full-text representation of your logo and brand. Wordmark logos include Disney’s famous signature-style logo and Google’s crisp and clean text logo.
A Mascot is an animal, person, creature, or other personification of your brand. Anything from Tony the Tiger and Mr. Peanut to The KFC Colonel and Wendy from Wendy’s constitute mascot logos.
An Illustration is a more detailed scene or imagery used to represent your brand. The barn for Pepperidge Farm or the barn from Country Crock are examples of illustration-style logos. It doesn’t always have to be a barn, though. But it can be if the client wants it to be. Don’t force a barn into the design but also don’t actively exclude it either. Maybe just ask if they want a barn illustration just to be safe.
Anyway, I digress. An Emblem is a shield, badge, or other enclosure that creates a shape for the logo to rest inside. Great examples of emblem logos are the Harley Davidson patch logo and the Starbucks circular badge logo.
Any combination of elements become an aptly-named “Combination Logo,” which is a specific combination of logo elements used to represent your business and brand as a whole.
Examples include: The Nike with their swoosh, wordmark, and “just do it”; The Harley Davidson eagle illustration and patch logo; Walt Disney with their signature logo, castle mark, and the all-seeing, all-knowing Mickey Mouse mascot.
Asking which elements the client wants in their logo helps make sure you don’t waste your time designing a detailed illustrated typography logo for someone who wants a simple abstract icon mark.
11) Are there any fonts, colors, styles, or other imagery you know you want (or don’t want)?
If the client already has ideas for their logo, you need to know. Some clients may come to a design studio because they have no idea what they want and need guidance. However, other clients may only need someone to technically execute an fully-developed idea they’ve been working on already.
Purple Umbrella Brewery may already know they want a font as thick and bold as their signature dark stout beer. Maybe they’ve had this idea of an umbrella with a beer stein handle in their head for months and they want you to actualize it. Any ideas they have, good or bad, will also give you more insight into their view of their own company.
What a client doesn’t want in their logo is just as vital of information as what they do want. Perhaps the Purple Umbrella Brewery wants to ironically not use purple in their logo. You need to know that before you design 15 different logos that focus on purple as the brand color.
Even if a client doesn’t explicitly have ideas about things like fonts or colors. it is always a good idea to help them discover what they like. List or show them some basic colors. Let them peruse the Adobe Fonts library.
Any time you can help the client come to their own conclusions about the logo design, you should. You want the client to love their own logo, if they think they were the genius who came up with the whole thing, they’ll love it even more!
12) What existing logos do you like, and why?
This one can honestly be the most telling out of all these logo design questions. Finding out what your client likes (and dislikes) about existing logos will better inform your logo design process.
Usually, the client already has a few logos in mind when they’re looking for their own logo. However, even if the client may not specifically have any logos in mind, they will very much still have likes and dislikes about famous logos like McDonalds, Starbucks, Coca-Cola, Apple, and more.
Pro Tip: Don’t show the client specific logos for examples of style unless they are already very well-known. Lesser-known or unknown logos may lead to the client being unsatisfied with anything you design other than something almost identical to the logos you showed them in the beginning.
THE FUN STUFF
Once you’ve gotten most of the direct logo design questions out of the way, it’s time to have a little fun. Asking creative, thought-provoking questions get the juices flowing in the client’s brain and really makes them think about their company.
This is good for you, because the more they get excited about their company’s brand, the easier your job is in turning their excitement into fuel for the logo design process.
13) Which of the following words best describe your company?
One simple way to do this is to amass a large checklist of descriptor words for them to choose from. These words include things like:
• High-End
• Quirky
• Comforting
• Classy
• Playful
• Timeless
• Authentic
• Energetic
• Relatable
• Adventurous
• Etc.
Another great way to draw more artistic direction out of a client creatively is to list a series of opposing words and assigning them scale values.
Asking a client where their company might land on 5 point scale between two different concepts can sometimes help the client make decisions they didn’t know they needed to make about the company. Concepts like:
Modern • —– • —– • —– • —– • Classic
Simple • —– • —– • —– • —– • Intricate
Affordable • —– • —– • —– • —– • Luxurious
Fun • —– • —– • —– • —– • Serious
Casual • —– • —– • —– • —– • Professional
Local • —– • —– • —– • —– • International
Left Twix • —– • —– • —– • —– • Right Twix
Marvel • —– • —– • —– • —– • DC
All of these different descriptor word questions help narrow down the style and approach to your logo design process.
In fact, word association games like these can sometimes be the most helpful in terms of artistic direction.
14) If your business were a part of a full-course dinner, what course would it be?
Although some questions may seem a little absurd, or even completely unrelated, you’d be surprised how valuable questions like this can actually be
A dessert logo would differ from an appetizer logo and an appetizer logo would differ from a wine and cheese logo. The more mood and imagery your creative questions evoke, the better.
Ask them what movie genre/soundtrack combination company would be. You can imagine how different a heavy metal action/adventure logo would be compared to a country/bluegrass romantic comedy logo.
Make the client fuse a superhero with a wild animal to truly embody their company. Is your company a Superman Hawk? How about a Captain Planet Kangaroo? Maybe the client sees their company more as a Thor Whale.
Thor Whale new band name called it.
15) What is the Embodiment of the Brand?
One of the more fun and creative logo design questions to ask is “What would your company be if it were:…”
• An animal?
• A vehicle?
• An actor/actress?
• A movie or television show?
• A musical instrument?
• A sport?
• A time of day?
• A cereal brand?
• A serial killer?
• A member of The Killers?
• Etc.
If the Purple Umbrella Brewery tells you that their company would be a Cheetah, a Lamborghini, the show The Flash, and NASCAR, then they probably want their logo to have some speed, motion, or energy incorporated into the design. That, or they have cocaine addiction, in which case you may want to see if you can help them seek help for their addiction. Or see if they’ll share the cocaine. Your call.
MORE LOGO DESIGN QUESTIONS?
The most important part about creative questionnaires is making them as fun and painless as possible. You don’t want your client to get burnt out on boredom and professionalism. It’s the 21st century and I’m pretty sure all of those dystopian fiction stories I loved so much growing up are turning out to not be fiction stories, so let’s just all try to have some fun and enjoy each other’s company, people.
With that in mind, I leave you with my favorite of all my dumb, creative logo design questions.
BONUS) If the Company were a member of the Spice Girls, which one would it be?
• Sporty Spice
• Scary Spice
• Posh Spice
• Baby Spice
• Ginger Spice
Five Answers to a seemingly innocuous question. All very different. In fact, asking a company to associate with one of the spice girls actually gives you a better understanding of the client’s vision than you might initially think.
The marketing geniuses behind the Spice Girls brand knew what they were doing when they invented 5 distinct roles for the performers to fill.
Sporty Spice immediately calls to mind an energetic, athletic aesthetic. A Sporty Spice logo might have a sense of motion, strength, or boldness to it.
Scary Spice has an edgy, in-your-face attitude. Empowering and unique, a Scary Spice logo will scream for your attention (and get it)!
Posh Spice is the epitome of high-class luxury. Whether it’s dark & mysterious or sleek and stylish, a Posh Spice logo shows elegance through subtlety.
Baby Spice is light-hearted and fun. A Baby Spice logo is a bubbly, colorful expression of playfulness and innocence.
Ginger Spice brings the zest and heat to the Spice Girls. Liveliness, glamour, sensuality, or merely a red-hot color scheme could be expected of a Ginger Spice logo.
Remember, doing business can all-to-often come across as bland and boring.
Don’t let your business, or your client’s business, feel stuffy. Take a deep breath and get weird with it!
Inspired logo design questions beget inspired answers and inspired answers beget an inspired logo design process.
Are you looking for some inspired design for your company’s logo? Never fear, DELT IS HERE!