The Truth about Logo Design

If you know anything about branding or enjoy design, you’ve probably stumbled across the TikTok/Insta videos of someone redoing a logo. The script goes something like:

Flash to boring logo that is just typed out text in a generic font.

The designer says something along the lines of “Tired of making boring logos?” and wags their finger at the screen.

They then proceed to do a google search based on some keywords they had the client jot down, trace a photo they find, and shove it into some fancier font they found.

They end the video by saying: “What do you think? Did I make the logo better or worse?”

Now, depending on the kind of person you are… maybe this video makes you feel bad about yourself. It’s hard not to compare yourself, especially on social media.

What you need to remember is that this is not reality.

The reality is much more boring and difficult to make interesting short form content for.

Here’s how real logo and branding goes:

Meet with client to fill out brief and decide on deliverables.

Make 3 initial versions that nobody will ever see but probably take you several hours. After searching fonts and inspiration and making a bunch of logo marks that should remain hidden.

Client either picks one, but usually they don’t. They ask for a bunch of variants.

Rinse and repeat as timeline/budget/contract allows until you have a logo.

Then you have to decide on colors.

This too will go through several rounds of revisions and discussion and back and forth.

Just look at some of our early attempts. We were quite taken with the idea of those book nooks with a doorway into an infinite corridor.

There was also an early purple palette that we felt was more unique than competitors teal and blue.

There was endless back and forth, and we event created early prototypes with some of these logos.

Make it stand out

Kind of a nightmare right? There’s so much going on.

So in true iterative fashion, we went back to the drawing board for something friendlier. A lot of the drawing board…

But finally we started approaching the finish line…

This is what REAL logo design looks like. What really goes on behind those 30s video clips on TikTok. And at the end of it all? I’m pretty satisfied with the result.