
Designers Spill the Beans: How to Make Your Own Logo from Scratch - aleksandra_598
https://blog.themeskingdom.com/how-to-make-your-own-logo-from-scratch/
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actionscripted
1: Find logos you like, and a few from your industry.

2: Pick a few colors you like, and a few in your industry.

3: Pick a few fonts you like, and a few in your industry.

4: Find icons/shapes related to your business (google images: "[business type]
icon" as a start, then branch from there based on what you find).

5: Mash it all together as many different ways a possible.

6: See what you like/dislike. Repeat as needed.

That's it, that's the secret. Get stuff you like and stuff that works and mash
it together to see what happens. Then take your mash-ups and keep mashing and
playing until you find something that fits. You don't have to love it, just
get something that works. A lot of folks don't like their branding initially.

What designers won't tell you is that the process is sometimes just brute-
forcing creativity and that's totally okay. You can't always feel inspired or
have that "one perfect idea" and you've still gotta get stuff done.

~~~
com2kid
After spending too many hours unable to decide on a color theme (those color
theme designers are not all that great IMHO) I saved myself the time and
trouble and paid a real designer a good chunk of $ to get an actual logo, a
great color scheme, and a PDF of design language guidelines.

I'd rank it as the single best decision I've made for my startup. With the
design language guidelines I can throw together UI screens super easy, I just
need to assemble the parts I've been given in an appropriate way. The logo
receives constant positive feedback, and having a _good_ set of colors
simplifies a lot of UI and UX tasks.

No way could I have done it myself to this level of quality in anything
resembling a timely fashion.

A good logo and color scheme can had for ~$1000. Yes that is a lot of money
for a super early stage startup. Figure it'll take multiple days to do it
yourself, 20 hours, $50/hr, unless you seriously low-ball your time, just pay
someone else to do it.

Honestly, if making anything resembling a consumer facing product, throw a
couple thousand and get preliminary design work done up front. Ask for a few
sample UI layouts based on whatever rough ideas for "functionality" exist. The
important part is learning how information is going to be structured on a
page/screen. Colors, font, font size, font style? What sort of grid is being
used, how much white space, rounded or non-rounded UI elements, drop shadows
yes/no, what do confirmation/cancellation buttons look like?

Have someone who is good at it make all of these decisions. Having the same
person make all of these decisions means there will be a consistent look and
feel to the product.

~~~
Wistar
I consider $1000 for a good logo and design/use guidelines to be an incredible
bargain.

~~~
adfm
Too true. Sites like 99designs might deliver something useable, but working
with somebody that knows their stuff will pay dividends.

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hisnameisjimmy
This advice is basically telling you to learn to become a logo designer.

~~~
kawfey
Sometimes I wish GNU/Linux developers and evangelists wouldn't take this
advice, because there's some pretty bad designs (and a few passable) logos out
there.
[https://www.gnu.org/graphics/graphics.html](https://www.gnu.org/graphics/graphics.html)

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CharlesW
Missing from Tip 2 is maybe the biggest "secret", which is that all visual
designers build libraries of inspirational reference material. For example,
logo designers will typically have several books full of logotypes, symbols,
etc.

My recommendation is to start with these two books: Symbol[1] and Logo[2].

[1]
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/1780671849/](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1780671849/)
[2]
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/1780671806/](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1780671806/)

~~~
aleksandra_598
Yeah, you're right. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

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notatcomputer68
Pick a nice font and color write the company/product name or an abbreviation.

~~~
prawn
This works as a fallback, especially if the alternative is getting caught up
on a full design process for a project that might not even go anywhere.

For all the logos of all my projects (literally dozens of them), my least
favourite was the lone one done by a dedicated graphic designer.

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detritus
> Tip 4: Think About the Form and Not About Symmetry

er.. no. Symmetry isn't a be-all and end-all, but any half-decent designer
will be flipping or mirroring horizontally and vertically their logos and
pieces to check they look 'ok' the 'other way around'. The human brain's a
funny thing, and some people's perception differs from others ('No!'), so it's
worth ensuring that what you think looks ok doesn't look completely borked to
other people. Flipping's a handy tip here.

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layer8
And here I thought this was about how to make your own Logo interpreter in
Scratch.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_(programming_language)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_\(programming_language\))

[2] [https://scratch.mit.edu/](https://scratch.mit.edu/)

~~~
timbit42
That would have been much more interesting.

