Designing the Bread & Pepper logo

03 Jul 2009
3 comments

The logo of Bread & Pepper took, to be honest, quite a long time to design. Mostly because I was my own client and there was no real deadline. Although I think that designing things for yourself is a tedious process, I'm quite pleased with the result.

As wikipedia tells us, a logo is a graphical element that, together with its logotype form a trademark or commercial brand. Typically, a logo's purpose is that of immediate recognition.

It must be different for every designer but I go through the following stages when designing a logo.

1 The Brief
2 Research
3 Sketches on Paper
4 Sketches on the computer
5 Taking a break
6 Evaluation
7 Typography, Positioning and Color

1. The Brief

Because we were our own clients this time the brief was a bit different then normal. But Petar, Joeri and me had a few talks and e-mails about it and it became clear that all of us wanted a clean and simple logo. Preferable with the color red and with a symbol that would be easy to recognize.

2. The Research

At the time I was studying at the University of the Arts of London and this gave me access to a brilliant library full of inspirational books. Quite often I just went through a couple of books in my lunch break. But maybe the most accessible and best inspiration I got from two excellent inspirational website; Logopond and Creattica. Looking at work from other designers helps you to decide on the look & feel that you are after. Some logos that inspired me:

3. Sketches on Paper

Then I started scribbling small sketches in my sketchbook. Every time an idea popped in my mind I scribbled it on paper. I made countless little sketches, especially at moments where I had to kill time. An example is when I was waiting on my plane on the airport. At this stage I was just focussing on the symbol and not yet on any typography and color.

4. Sketches on the Computer

From all the scribbles I selected a few that were worth to try out on the computer. I use Photoshop for this but GIMP or Illustrator should work just as good. When converting scribbles into digital images you get a good idea of what works and what doesn't when in digital form. I finally ended with four concepts which passed the digital test.

5. Taking a break

I believe that taking a break in a design process is very important. Since I spend every hour I could on the first four stages I needed a fresh pair of eyes to evaluate the concepts that I came up with. I like to leave the "project" for a little while and try to not think about it and focus on other projects. Doing this gives me the opportunity to look at my own work with a fresh pair of eyes. Of course you don't always have the luxury of time in a logo design process but if you have the time, leave it for a while, it's definitely worth it!

6. Evaluation

With a fresh look I evaluate the concepts that I came up with. And make some changes where necessary. Most of the time I start to get one or two favorites around this time. At this stage I wanted input from Petar and Joeri. After I had sent them the drafts they both voted for the same concept. And since this concept was also one of my favorites we didn't had to argue at all.

7. Typography, Positioning and Color

Now we figured out which symbol we wanted I started to focus on color, positioning and typography. From the beginning we knew we wanted to use a deep red color in the log so this was quite easy. But after trying a lot of things I figured out that the logo would look best in a light color on a red background.

Then the typography.. one of the hardest things in logo design. To figure out what font would suit best I first tried to establish what type of font I wanted. After trying some really basic fonts I figured out that a Sans-serif font with a clean look and feel would be best. I used linotype to find a font type that I had in my mind 'Insignia', funnily enough I discovered that the designer of this particular font went to the same university as I did. After tweaking the size of the ampersand and the distance between the letters I got to what it's now. Then the only thing left was the positioning. This was just a good old example of trial and error. I tried the symbol in every position but at the end just straight centered looked the best.

8. The result

Tags: Company, Design