- Hi, YouTube, I'm Shantanu Kumar,
a self-taught graphic designer and a fellow YouTuber.
In my new Skillshare class,
I'm going to teach you all about designing a logo.
And guess what?
Today I'm sharing an exclusive sneak peek with you.
Stay tuned.
(uplifting music)
The first step to any design process is research.
Among all the projects that I've done,
Sikkim Coffee is definitely my favorite.
This project in specific was very research intensive,
and the main idea of the research was to come up
with a concept that would best represent the state
and the people.
I started by researching
the architecture of the monasteries there,
studying things that were unique to the state,
and also took inspiration
from a style of painting called thangka.
I would say the research alone took about a month.
Eventually, we settled on two concepts
and decided to merge both of them.
The first concept was red panda,
which is the state animal of Sikkim,
and the second concept was Tibetan calligraphy.
I merged these two concepts
and created this logo for Sikkim Coffee.
Every logo starts with a brief.
If there's no brief, there's no direction.
This is the client brief that we'll be working on today.
In the brief it mentions that Kiki's Creative Club
is a co-working space and cafe based in New Delhi.
They're looking for a logo to use for the cafe,
app, marketing, and other merchandise.
It's a space dedicated to empowering creative professionals.
The name of the space is inspired
by 1989 Studio Ghibli classic film,
"Kiki's Delivery Service."
According to the brief, the goals and missions
are that they provide a safe space for creative people,
it's a calm and comfortable environment,
they help increase productivity without feeling burnt out,
help overcome creative blocks.
The space works on a subscription basis
and falls on the premium side.
They also do coffee takeaways for non-members.
When a client sends you a brief, it's not really structured.
So what I like to do is go onto my Creative Club board
and organize my information there.
You can use Google Docs, pen, paper,
whatever you're comfortable with.
I like to use Milanote. It's a free software.
It's like a digital whiteboard,
and it's somewhere I can organize all my files
and information in one place.
So I typed down all the information,
from the name of the brand
to goals and missions of the brand.
I'm going to drag down a note and write Client Name,
that is Kiki's Creative Club.
I'll do same for other information, like location.
So location might be New Delhi.
In most of the cases,
the client brief isn't adequate enough to start working
on your design process directly.
So what I like to do
is have a lot of conversations with the client.
I ask a lot of questions
and try to understand the client's perspective on the brand.
The main objective is to align yourself
with the client's perspective
and embody the spirit of the brand.
This will help you save a lot of conflicts later on.
I would recommend you to document everything
that you discuss.
The questions you ask can vary from project to project,
but usually I like to begin with these four questions.
Why do you exist?
What's the purpose of your brand?
What future do you want to create?
What principles help you guide this behavior?
You can always give the clients examples
to help them understand the questions better.
For example, Uber's mission statement is,
"Transportation as reliable as running water,
for everyone, everywhere."
In a similar fashion,
I ask my client what their mission statement is.
The shorter and clearer your answer is,
the more concrete the direction will be.
I realized the more engaging my conversations are,
the better I understand the brand.
You can then follow up by asking questions
like who their competitors are
and what are the brands they're inspired by.
So after I have all the information,
I organize them on my Milanote board.
So I'll put down notes for each of the questions
that I've asked.
So, Purpose, Mission, Vision, and Values.
Since I have the brief with me, I'll go ahead
and copy the answers to these from my brief.
Then I organize them into columns.
Let's say Goals and Mission.
This can be my Client information.
I'll also go ahead and create a timeline for this project.
So I'm going to pick a checklist, to-do list,
and then have Research, Moodboard, Sketching,
and Final Logo.
For this, I can add a title here and call it my Timeline,
and add individual deadlines to each of the stages.
Next, I'll go ahead and create boards
for each of the important steps.
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I'll create another checklist for the deliverables.
So in our case, it's Logo, Color Palette, Typography,
and our Final Presentation.
For any brand, it's important to understand
who the target audience is.
This is done after having conversation with your client.
In our case, for Kiki's Creative Club,
I'll go ahead and create three user personas.
User persona is basically a character sketch
of what your idle customer looks like.
I'll drag down three notes and give them our imaginary name.
So let's say Kim, Dhruv, Anushka.
And basically understand
what my idle customer would look like.
So for me, all my idle customers would be creatives.
So maybe Kim could be an Art Director.
Maybe Dhruv could be a Freelancer.
Maybe Anushka could be a Content Creator.
One thing to note here is that it's important
to mention your personas in details.
This will make sure
that you have covered your entire target audience.
I'll also write the age, what the hobbies could be.
Now I'll dive into the deeper research.
I watched the movie "Kiki's Delivery Service"
from which the name is heavily inspired by,
and I better understood the reason behind it.
The movie tells us about how failure
is an inevitable part of a creative process,
but most importantly, it's also temporary.
Kiki, the main character,
tells us that if you stop having fun,
then the magic will slip away.
Kiki's Creative Club is a space designed
to bring that magic back and prevent burnout.
Now, I'll go ahead and add all this information
that I've gathered so far onto my Milanote board.
I'm going to add just a few more screenshots from the movie.
I'm going to add a poster from the movie.
I'm going to write a more defined version of the message.
So I look at "Kiki's Delivery Service" message
and then have this information onto my Milanote board.
Now moving on to the competitor analysis.
While conducting research about my competitors,
I look for places where my target audience would usually be.
So that would include coffee spaces
and other coworking spaces in my area.
Personal experiences is also one way
to do your competitor analysis.
To understand my competitor better,
I conduct interviews with people in my circle.
I like to ask them questions about what they like,
how they work, and what places they go to.
I like to see who they are as a brand,
what their target audience is, what their pricing plan is,
and what their design looks like.
I usually take about two to three days in this process.
Having conversations with client
is very important at every stage,
just to make sure that you're on the same page.
The client knows the industry better.
He's the expert, and you always want the expert's advice.
So according to the brief,
I know that my competitors are WeWork
and Double Slash // Coffee.
So I start with researching about them first.
So their target audience is mostly startups
and small businesses.
So I'll do some more research on WeWork.
I'll look up about their branding.
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A lot of creatives also work
from the comfort of the home studios.
So how do I convince them to come to Kiki's Creative Club?
Apart from other coworking spaces,
even coffee shops can also be a competition.
So that could be Starbucks, Third Wave Coffee,
or Blue Tokai.
I'm going to list all
of this information onto my Research board.
You can also look for competitors in other countries
and take inspirations from them.
Now, I'll go ahead
and add all this information onto my Milanote board.
(uplifting music)
Thanks for joining me for this lesson.
This was one part of my logo design class on Skillshare.
Join me in the full class
to learn step-by-step how to design a logo for any brand.
Click on the link below,
and I can't wait to see you there.
(uplifting music)
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