so how do i tom satori end up with a successful and an efficient logo design
every single time today's video is going to show you how i get from point a to point b
with a real life project you're going to be able to learn some essential skills for successful
logo designs now people often ask me what font do i use for my videos
and so i'm just going to let you guys know that today i'm using the elleron font family
discussing the project with the client early on is really really essential
you need to know everything about the client their business and also their target market
now every single project obviously needs a client and so let's learn a thing or
two about this specific client for this project that i worked on
and where it's going to take us along the journey of the legal design process the client for today's
project that we're going to be looking at reached out to me first they describe their situation
and the niche that they operate in even from this initial early message i pulled some keywords of
interest that are going to help me later down the line to better understand the project
so obviously jiu jitsu is one of them and then teaching people team strong and community these
words all describe the business and the overall feeling of the brand and trying to think of the
project in this way early on really will help you later down the line in the project
now very early on in the project actually before you even design anything you want to
secure a contract i've said this so many times on this channel and i myself have fallen victim not
just once but twice from not having a contract and i lost that money and also precious time
so guys if you want to familiarize yourself with how to actually use a contract and how
to form one i've got some videos at the end of this one all about contracts and graphic design
so in case you guys don't actually know here's a brief description of what jiu-jitsu is it's
just the martial art that my logo design needs to be based around for the project
now mood boards are essential and a critical part of my design process
and they help me build a picture of the business and the client perfectly in my mind
i've said before about how much i like to use miller notes and i do use them for my various
logo design projects because it's a online place to gather your ideas your thoughts your everything
to do with the logo project your inspiration i use it two different degrees sometimes i'll just
use it for a mood board but other projects i will go the whole nine yards and i will
develop ideas concepts make notes have a to-do list and so on you don't have to use milano and
they're not sponsoring today's video but that's what i prefer to use when i'm designing a logo
and after doing research and contemplating things it was obvious to me that a serif font is not
going to work for this logo design it's way too formal and it doesn't fit the narrative for a
martial arts or a kind of sporting logo design but this should be obvious to most designers anyway
i actually asked the client in the initial stages to send over some keywords that relate to their
brand and the message of the company and these are some of the important ones that i pulled out
these keywords will help me build concepts later in the logo design process and you
yourself should aim to get these words from your clients as early on as possible
now one thing to note is that these keywords they need to resonate and they need to make
sense to the target market so as an example in this specific project people who are going to
sign up to a jiu jitsu school or class are going to want to have a sense of you know community
togetherness teamwork and of course it comes across as being strong and you know robust
in nature because you don't want a weak or a kind of soft teacher or class when it comes to martial
arts so always think about the keywords relating back to the target market when you're designing a
logo now i didn't know a whole lot about jiu-jitsu when i embarked on this project i knew a thing or
two about it but i wasn't someone who knew you know the whole martial art inside out and so of
course i had to do some research i had to study into what exactly jiu-jitsu is this involved the
history of jiu-jitsu this involved lingo and you know terminologies used by people who practice it
just so i fully understood what jiu-jitsu was all about at four concepts i took the initial
keywords that i gained from the client and then i generated other keywords around these initial ones
so for example here are some words for strong that i felt would relate back to the brand
and the concept later it's a good idea to do this for each of the original keywords
because in doing so we can actually build concepts that are relevant around these words
and so these keywords are actually going to allow you to generate a concept or several
concepts and if you have been following along the process properly these keywords will be
relatable to the target market the business and also the niche sector that that brand operates in
and so after a lot of thinking and planning i managed to come up with these word
pairs as you can see on screen each pair relates back to the brand and they utilize keywords and
can offer a fruitful concept for the logo design when making these word pairs i try
to think about things in a visual way and how to demonstrate those word concepts in a visual manner
say for example grip might be a fist in some way but yeah these are the things you need to think
about for the four combination pairs i could also add jiu jitsu at the very end of the brand name
and incorporate that into the logo itself but this is something i probably would talk to the client
about as well before actually including it so once i went with the final choice of the word pairing
i again generated words around that pair to come up with the concepts for the final chosen phrase
and as you can see i'm going with iron grip and so i tried to think about this visually and what
words would communicate this message effectively and in a very simple way one of the first concepts
that came to my mind was a fist due to the word grip and this is quite a cliche thing but this
is what i initially started to work with a fist is quite obvious and too detailed so i started
to make simple shapes that could resemble a fist in some way as you can see here i also
considered shape psychology and how that relates to martial arts and sports stability and strength
are communicated by edged shapes and straight lines so i think it's a good choice like i said
a serif font was never on the cards for this logo but i finally went for a bold impacting sans-serif
logo type and this would fit in line with the brand a lot better than a serraphone and from
my research i noted that martial art brands often went for sans-serif fonts and it does make sense
another concept that i wanted to explore was that of using the g in grip and again i simplified
things from a shape that was appealing but also relevant i also added a hook section here that
gave a kind of metallic feel which again relates back to the iron part of the brand name as iron is
a metal small things like this are always good to consider throughout the entire lego design project
so i again applied more shape psychology and i made sure to include straight edges
so the logo does conform to a strong robust nature this fits in line with the brand and also again
back to the iron part of the logo identity that being said however one of the key words
was community and also team so i think having a circular shape here does relate back to the
sense of having community and you know friendship and teamwork this is again shape psychology and
it is actually quite important so i was headed in the final direction for the logo and i felt
that there was too much negative space right here if the logo was set on top of lego type it would
just look a bit odd having this much space here so i came up with several design solutions to
resolve that issue and these are the three logo design solutions that i managed to come up with
each of them have qualities relating back to those keywords and also the brand and the client and i
finally settled on a design solution and we were both really really happy with it
i feel it's a strong simple logo that links back to the main keywords of the brand
and it does exactly what it's set out to do and so there was today's logo design process video
using an actual project that i worked on last year back in 2019. what did you think of the final
design outcome and what did you think of today's video i do read all of your guys's comments so let
me know what you want to see on the channel and i will do my best to make that possible if i feel it
resonates with most of the audience who watch this channel for graphic design resources for tutorials
inspiration and everything else but of course guys until next time design your future today peace
you