Put On Your Thinking Cap.

“I could ramble on about how talented Jared Lunde is at programming and design, but like any other artist or dedicated professional, I believe it is best to let his work speak for itself. After engaging with Jared and similar vendors on countless large projects, however, I can honestly say there is one thing that truly… absolutely… unequivocally set him apart from the rest: the process. In a business environment in which your success is becoming more and more interdependent with the success of outside vendors, I wholeheartedly felt Jared took the time to understand my needs and my goals which he then translated into the final product. He gave me a powerful level of confidence in his abilities that eventually developed into an incredibly trusting customer-client relationship.”

Frank O’Driscoll
E-Revenue Project Manager
American Cancer Society
Eastern Division, Inc.

There is no such thing as a How To or DIY guide when it comes to logo design
Having been in the field now for a while, I’ve read a lot of opinions and guides on logo design. Do this, don’t do this, you need to have this. For the most part, it is all rubbish. As disappointing as it is to hear or say, some people just do not have it. You can practice every day, create *logos* for a million businesses and still have absolutely no idea what you are doing. I don’t think there are any specific guidelines, but I do feel there are basic principles. I also think that every designer needs their own process and their own comfort zone. So instead of going through a bunch of steps telling you what you need to do to make a good logo I decided that I would share my own experience in design.

How I design a logo
The most important part of designing a logo for me is learning about the business I am designing for. As hard as it is to do sometimes, I try to pull out every ounce of information I can about a person or establishment and typically the ones who are able to give the most information about their target, their service, their competitors and what makes them unique are the ones who end up receiving the best quality of work.

Businesses are like people – no matter how similar they may appear, you can bet there are a lot of differences. I’ve never had to two clients in the same industry describe their business exactly the same. My goal is to make that business’s logo reflect its persona, its personality and to make it speak to its target. If I am designing a logo for a construction company, what kind of construction do they do? What sizes of budgets do they work with? Who are their typical clientele? If I’m designing a logo for a construction company that typically constructs low-income housing, you can bet their logo is going to be miles apart from one that constructs office buildings downtown.

Now that I know more about who I am working with, I start to get ideas flowing. I am an atypical logo designer in that I do not like to sketch my ideas out on paper. I have an innate ability to piece things together in my head and actually can see things more in my mind than my hand is even able to draw. A great thing about designing from the head, too is that if you have a good idea you are going to remember it. If you can remember an idea you had 3 hours earlier while you were at the grocery store and you are able to construct it in Adobe Illustrator when you get home, it’s a good sign that you are perceiving a good logo. Why? Because memorability is the most important thing about logo design. If I don’t remember the idea I was having it is either because it was too complex or just wrong. Call me crazy, but I firmly believe that sketching is a detriment to my design process.

Communication through design
Another important thing that plays into the memorability in a logo design how well it communicates with the business it represents. Not only do we want a consumer to remember the *face* of the design, we want them to remember the whole package that it represents. This is not completely reliant on the logo design itself, a lot has to do with additional branding such as advertisement design, but that’s why we need to make a strong, brandable logo. We need something we can build a body around. A logo isn’t going to be very memorable if we can’t put it on anything or if it gets lost in the mix of an advertisement. It should be able to stand up to the design or image around it.

How can you use this information?
If you are planning on hiring a designer, well… hire me because I can get the job done right . If you don’t hire me, hire another professional with a strong portfolio and a solid client list. Do not crowdsource your logo or have a logo designed in a hurried manner, have it done by someone who wants to learn about you and about your business and is willing to spend the time necessary to do so. You should also be willing to pay a reasonable amount of money for your design even if funds are tight. Logo design is not done in a day and does not require only a day’s wage. If you hire a designer to do your logo, they may end up offering better deals on things like websites, stationery and advertisement designs since they are already quite familiar with your business and your branding direction.

If you are a young designer trying to better yourself, I encourage you to figure out what process works for you and to study other successful brands in the marketplace to get a better idea of what has worked for different industries. I also encourage you to learn from people who have experience in design and are way better at it than you are. Watch a Paul Rand interview, for instance. See what made his head work. My favorite course in college was a History of Graphic Design course and it was invaluable to see what others had done before me.

Take this for what it is
This is just my opinion on a very subjective matter. It is sort of my stream of consciousness and since my mind is always moving, somethings may have been a little unclear or incomplete and if you would like to hear more or get clarification, feel free to comment. As always, if you can prove me wrong or you disagree about something, I would love to hear about it and I encourage you to share it with others.

I’ve coded a lot of websites for a lot of different designers and a common problem I experience with each one is something that should really be natural to them in the first place – the idea that form follows function. Most of this problem stems from the fact that they are not web developers. The most overlooked areas that I’ve noticed are those in SEO, usability and in page load time.

Web Fonts
A well-known fact about non-developing designers is that they love to use not safe for web fonts. This becomes more of a problem when they specifically request that a webpage looks exactly like their design. The truth is that no matter how you slice it, web developers are limited in options when it comes to web fonts. We shouldn’t use sIFR, because that can cause serious load time problems. Even with @font-face our hands are tied because we are limited to only free fonts due to redistribution clauses in font licenses. The last resort is to use images to replace all of the good quality content that should be on the page. An alt tag only does so much for search engines so we are really shooting ourselves in the foot in the form of Search Engine Optimization by using this method. What is the purpose of producing a website that *looks good* if no one is going to see it in the first place?

Page Titles
Another problem I have faced not only with web designers, but clients in general is that they like to use their page titles as cheesy marketing devices rather than for keyword optimization. In a perfect world, I’d like to use something like Works by Jared Lunde | Design Simplified, but the reality of the matter is that I am much better off using a page title like Logo Design & Web Development | Madison, Wisconsin because those are the key phrases that I am looking to get visits from. Again, what is the purpose of making it look good if no one is visiting?

Background Images
A major pet-peeve of mine is when I see a website that doesn’t take into account screen resolution sizes or load times with their web pages. A designer should always be aware of typical screen resolution sizes and plan accordingly. I’m also a firm believer that a background doesn’t need to be elaborate or textured and in some cases it definitely shouldn’t be. While the background may look *cool* it is entirely possible that you are in fact doing harm to the experience by a) increasing load time by a lot or b) distracting from content that a visitor should be paying attention to. I mention the former a lot because it really is the most important thing you need to consider when designing a web page. You never want to direct a visitor’s attention away from where they should be looking and with proper background usage, we can actually point them in the correct direction. For instance, you’ll see a lot advertisements in magazines where something as subtle as lines in sand can be directing your eye attention to a specific phrase on the page. It is entirely possible to harness those same techniques on a website and you should definitely consider it if you are going to be using a background image.

Javascript
One final annoyance of mine is poor use of javascript effects. Not all javascript effects are bad, in fact if used correctly they are amazing and can add a real wow-factor to the UI. Some designers just don’t know how to use it correctly, though. I’ve been on a few projects where a substantial amount of good information is hidden from a user’s view for the sole purpose of using javascript fade ins/outs. The last thing we want to do is hide something we need the user to see from their eye line. Another downfall of hiding information is that there is a possibility that hiding enough will actually start to harm your search rankings. Because of this (and because some users have it turned off) there absolutely needs to be a no javascript backstop on the page where ever it is used.

The user interface is an integral part of a website no matter what the purpose. My job as a web designer and developer is to figure out how to make a website navigable and easy to use whilst making it look professional.

Different websites have different purposes and therefore have different requirements in the user interface. The first question I ask myself and my client when designing a web page is ultimately “What do you want the user to do next?” The question is so important, yet is often overlooked by most designers and developers. If I want them to fill out a form, how do I direct their attention to the form? If I want them to watch a video, how can I get them to do so? Knowing what you want a user to do next is important as knowing what exactly it is your website is about.

This task is much more difficult than it sounds on paper. We need to consider that the last thing we want a user to think they are looking at is spam, even if it is. Ultimately, a user wants to land on a page that is a) what they were searching for when reaching you and b) professional-looking enough not to raise any red flags. The former is most important on e-commerce websites where the goal is to sell something tangible and not look like a scam-artist while the first is a requirement across all websites. This means that the user interface includes not only includes design and content, but page titles and descriptions as well.

By taking into account the little things that affect a user’s website experience, we can ensure that the end result will be a positive one.

I was looking at my Gravatar account earlier today when I stumbled upon something interesting. I remember the day I first uploaded my new identity to Logopond I thought that was it, I would never tweak it and never have a need to. Wow how things change. Below is the evolution of my logo from May 31st on the right to sometime in July in the middle to my current version which I’ve just updated today.

The most glaring problem I was facing with the previous two was that in small sizes the shape could be kind of lost. The logo designs started to feel really frail to me which is a far cry from the look I was going for. Today I am fairly certain that I am done tweaking it, though. This latest version seems to portray the boldness I had always hoped it would and reduces to even favicon size really well. While, the general shapes of all of the marks are still very similar (a shape which I love and I think really speaks very loudly), the personality supporting the 3 is drastically different, in my opinion.

It just goes to show you, some projects just never end