I Don’t Start With A Logo

I design identities, but I almost never start with the logo.

Instead, I start collecting.

Old envelopes.
Books.
Textiles.
Photographs.
Pieces of typography.
Color palettes.
Artifacts.

None of those belong to my client. But they help me understand the kind of mark we’re looking for.

The logo comes later.

And that’s usually the hardest part for people to understand. They come to me expecting to immediately see sketches and mockups, but instead I’m knee deep in photos, antiques, or pages of notes. It probably doesn’t look much like logo design.

That’s because it isn’t. Not quite.

Because before I can design the mark, I have to understand the world it belongs to. If you’re a bird, I’m a bird. If you’re a realtor, I’m a realtor. If you sell sea shells by the sea shore, then I’m right there with you, Sally.

My favorite part of the process is the discovery phase.The part where I get to disappear into someone else’s world for a little while.

I research.
I collect.
I fill notebooks.
I make Pinterest boards.
I start noticing patterns.

Like the words my client repeats without realizing it or things they light up when they talk about.

The best logos are those that feel discovered rather than invented and that’s a hill I will happily die on. My job isn’t to invent an identity from scratch. It’s to uncover the one that was there all along and shape it into something that still feels true fifty years from now. Sometimes I find the mark quickly. Sometimes I have to search a little longer for the perfect fit. Sometimes the mark finds me.

A good logo shouldn’t feel like the beginning of a story.

It should feel like it has always belonged to it.