Updated June 14, 2026
So you need a logo. You’ve started a business, or you’ve come up with a new product or service that you know is going to be great. You’ve been working on it for a long time and it’s your baby. Now you need to find a way to get the word out — and that starts with a logo that does your baby justice.
Here’s how I approach it.
Step 1: The creative brief
Before any design work begins, I need to understand you — your company, your goals, your audience, your market, and your taste. I use a creative brief to gather this information, either as a questionnaire you fill out on your own or as a conversation we work through together. The questions cover a lot of ground, and for good reason. The quality of what comes out of this process is directly proportional to the quality of what goes into it.
Here’s what the brief typically covers:
- What is the mission of your company?
- What are its goals — one year, five years, ten years?
- List five characteristics that place you above your competition.
- Which of those five is most important, and why?
- Describe your primary audience — who are they and what are they like?
- Do you have a secondary audience? Describe them too.
- What is your primary message — the single most important thing you want a client to understand about you immediately?
- Mandatories — what must be included? Specific copy points, design elements, existing color palettes to complement or avoid, other materials the new identity needs to work alongside?
- List five direct competitors and their URLs. What are they doing right with their marketing? What are they doing wrong?
- List five logos from anywhere that you think are successful, and explain why.
- What is your deadline?
These questions might feel like a lot. They are. But every answer shapes the work — and a thorough brief is what separates a logo that truly represents your company from one that just looks nice.
Step 2: Research
Once the brief is complete I do my research. I look at your direct competitors and the broader market. What’s working in your industry? What’s been done to death? What does your primary audience respond to — and what turns them off? This context informs every decision that follows.
Step 3: Concepting
Now the real work begins. Armed with a clear picture of who you are, where you want to go, and what’s happening in your market, I start generating ideas. This means brainstorming on paper and in drawing programs, exploring typographic approaches and illustrated marks, conducting an extensive font search, sketching icons and symbols that might work for your brand. Several days and a considerable number of crumpled sheets of paper later, I have a handful of concepts I believe hit on all the right points.
These are presented to you in black and white only. Color comes later — and there’s a very good reason for that, which I’ve written about here.
Step 4: The review
Now it’s your turn. This step is just as important as anything I do — the review is how you keep the project on track and how I stay pointed in the right direction.
Sometimes the first presentation lands perfectly. The client loves the concepts, can’t decide between them, and we’re off to the races. Wonderful. But that’s not always how it goes, and that’s completely fine — creative development is a process, not a reveal.
What matters most at this stage is that you can tell me not just what you think, but why. “I don’t like these” without any further explanation sends me back to the drawing board with nothing to work with. Specific, honest feedback — even if it feels blunt — is what moves the project forward. A few questions worth asking yourself as you review:
- Which concept is closest to the mark, and what specifically isn’t there yet?
- If none of the concepts feel right, what feels missing? Go through them one by one.
- Did seeing the concepts remind you of something important you forgot to include in the brief?
- Have your goals shifted since we started?
Don’t worry about hurting my feelings. I’m a professional. I can take it. Nicely phrased is always appreciated, but honest is more important.
For a deeper guide to reviewing creative work, this post walks through the process in detail.
Step 5: Back to the drawing board
If the first presentation didn’t hit the mark, I go back to step 2 and repeat the process — informed now by your feedback — until we arrive at a concept you approve. This process is governed by the contract, which specifies the number of included revision rounds. If we reach the end of those rounds without resolution, something has broken down in communication somewhere. That warrants a direct conversation — a review of the brief question by question to figure out where the disconnect is. In my experience, this rarely happens when the brief is thorough and the feedback is specific.
Step 6: Finalization, color, and brand assets
Once a logo concept is approved, we move into finalization. This means small but meaningful refinements — adjustments to spacing, weight, proportion, and drawing — that elevate the chosen concept to its final professional form. These little things make a big difference.
Then comes color. We focus on color only after the mark itself is finalized, so that color decisions can be evaluated on their own merits rather than tangled up with questions about the design. Once a palette is chosen, the logo is delivered in a complete brand asset package — and these days, that means considerably more than a single logo file.
A complete package includes multiple mark formats: a primary mark, a secondary mark, a tertiary mark where needed, and a brand icon sized for social media profile images and favicons. Each of those marks is delivered in a full suite of color profiles — full color for digital use (RGB), full color for print (CMYK), black and white, reversed, and white versions. And every version is provided in both vector format for scalability and raster format for digital use.
That’s a lot of files — and every one of them has a job to do. Here’s a full breakdown of what a complete brand asset package includes and why each piece matters.
Keep all of it somewhere safe. I guarantee you’ll need it.
