Warning: you will want to eat chocolate after reading this post.

Paper Leaf was approached by one Jacqueline Jacek regarding her desire to launch her own artisan chocolate business here in Edmonton. We were commissioned for three main projects: logo design, package design, and website design. We were excited, for a few reasons.

It’s always a pleasure to be able to build an identity for a business from scratch as opposed to doing piece work here and there – building an identity from scratch ensures that there will be design continuity across the board, which is of a huge benefit to the business. Thus, to be able to start from the logo design and carry it through packaging to the website was ideal for both us and the client. As well, Jacqui is a very focused and driven person – the kind of person who hits her deadlines and gives you the website copy once, and it’s good to go. Great person to work with.

So let’s start from the top and look at the logo design process, after the jump.

LOGO DESIGN

Jacqui had come up with a name – JACEK Chocolate Couture – and an idea of who she wanted to market her product to. Namely, connoisseurs of fine chocolate – young, modern professionals who want the high end, hand-made stuff, not the people like me who thrown down on Mini Eggs like they said something about my mother (that being said, I absolutely love Jacqui’s chocolates – specifically the Lady Grey Caramel from the first collection).

Knowing her target market and the sort of look and feel she wanted her business to present, we set out to design her logo. Right off the bat we wanted to go for an emblem-style look that mixed traditional/elegant design with a slight modern touch. It’s always a challenge to mix design styles and pull it off, but we figured that if we chose a clean, sans-serif typeface that had longevity, we would be able to marry that to a more traditional emblem design.

After a while researching and an even longer while designing, here is the first draft of logos we sent to her:

After a little bit of deliberation, Jacqui got back to us with her pick – number 1. Gotta love when the client picks your favorite too. The only adjustments that needed to be made were to change the “chocolate couture” font to Gotham Medium to increase legibility at smaller sizes, and I wanted to shrink down the J a bit to increase the white space around it. When all was said and done, here’s the JACEK Chocolate Couture Logo in its final state:

Jacqui was super happy, and we were too. I felt it was a successful marriage of a) traditional design, b) modern design and c) targeted design. Next up we had to look at the packaging and website design for her brand.

PACKAGING DESIGN

While we were mainly sticking with the tried-and-true brown/creme color combo – seriously, it’s neigh-impossible to get away from if chocolate’s your game – Jacqui wanted to bring in a touch of color to her brand. Specifically, teal. She had bought her boxes from her supplier, and we decided to let the teal of the box more-or-less dictate the teal of the JACEK brand. Makes sense to me!

As should always happen when developing a business identity, we went back to the core principles of who we were marketing to to help steer the package design. The emblem-style logo was as close as we wanted to get to traditional/classic design, so we let a few principles of modern design make the decisions for us – namely, clean and legible design, confident with ample white space. Paper Leaf was tasked with designing a sort of sleeve that went around the box, with the logo located top center, and some vitals located on the back side (URL, “Enjoy Before” date, etc). The inside of the sleeve would house the information about each specific chocolate in the package, as well as a photo of each piece.

There wasn’t a ton of room to include all the required photos/information on the inside of the sleeve – it was a bit of a challenge. But hey, design wouldn’t be fun without a challenge, right? Here’s what we came up with – one shot, no revisions, which is thanks largely in part to Jacqui’s organization and communication skills.

And here’s a shot of the printed, finished sleeve on some of her chocolate boxes:

Overall, I think the packaging looks well-put-together, focused and appealing to JACEK Chocolate Couture’s target market.

Now that we’d completed the logo as well as the packaging for the product, we moved on to the final and biggest part of the identity project: the website.

WEBSITE DESIGN

Just like with the logo and the package design, we went back to the main principles of the brand to help focus our website design process: elegant, but not stuffy; a light modern touch; ample white space; clean and simple and appealing to the target market. I can’t stress this enough – going back to the principles of the brand will always send you down the right road.

Originally we weren’t sure how we wanted to use the teal in the website – should we make it super subtle, as in just for hyperlinks? Should we make it perhaps second on the totem pole, right there with creme (but after brown)?

We tried out a couple of designs that didn’t make the cut – here they are below (ghetto chocolate images in the design are just placeholders, not Jacqui’s chocolates):

We found some inspiration in a classy menu for the above design. We played with some textures and kept the site super clean. We liked how it looked, but decided it was a little too minimal, a little too classic and the lack of live text on the home page was sort of a deal breaker.

This guy was a little more modern, but we ended up throwing this one out too. To me, it’s just not that visually appealing. Functional, sure, but it didn’t really hold up to the standards we’d set for the logo and packaging. But the main reason we didn’t go with either of these designs is that we had a clear winner, in all of our minds, below:

This design is modern, has some depth, has good use of white space, uses teal well (a slightly darker shade) and is effective overall.  This guy was the clear cut winner – see it live by clicking the photo above, or just go to www.jacekchocolate.com. When everything is put together – the logo, the packaging, and the website – you can see the identity is consistent across the board. The reason for the consistency is due to the fact that we had clear communication right off the bat, and we always went back to the core principles we set out at the beginning, letting those pave the so called design road for us.

JACEK Chocolate Couture was launched on Dec 1, 2009, and they’re already 50% sold out for their Christmas run at the time of this authoring. They do ship, so if you have any interest in chocolate, I highly suggest heading over to their website and ordering one of their collections. The cool thing is, this is the only time you’ll be able to try these specific JACEK Chocolate Couture concoctions – once the collection is sold out, it’s gone. So check it out, and thanks for reading!

Recently a friend of mine, Randor, came to me for a logo redesign. He runs an Edmonton-based recording studio called Turnkey Studios (website updating in progress), and their current logo was one he wasn’t fully happy with. Long story short, the previous logo was designed prior to Randor buying out the studio – and now that he was the sole owner, he felt that the logo didn’t properly reflect the new direction of Turnkey.  Thus, he needed a redesign and he came back to Paper Leaf (thanks Randor)! We ended up designing him a logo that won Logo of the Day!

Hit the jump to learn how we went about creating this logo.

BRAINSTORMING

After Randor filled out the design brief, the next step was figuring out what didn’t work on the old logo, and which direction to go with the new one. Randor wanted the logo to be a little bit more masculine & modern, and also to have an element in the logo that speaks to sound/audio. The idea behind this is that the logo would be immediately recognizable as a recording studio (as opposed to a design studio, salon, or other type of “studio”).

Armed with this knowledge, I went back to my workspace and did some research. I found that it’s a little tough to represent sound/audio in a fashion that a) hasn’t been done and b) is recognizable to his target market. For example, at one point we were tossing around the idea of using a sine wave, which you’ll see later. After a draft version and some discussion, this idea got nixed; we realized mostly fellow audio engineers would recognize a sine wave – not so much recording artists. Considering Turnkey’s target market is not audio engineers, a sine-wave logo wouldn’t be effective.

SKETCHING

After researching and seeing what was out there and getting some ideas, I jumped into the sketch stage. Below are some examples of what came from this stage.

Now, I’m no Michaelangelo, and I’ll be the first to admit it. However, at this stage, what’s important is getting the basic idea down in a quick, visual format so you can see what will work and what won’t. This saves you time playing around with specific fonts, gradients and the like – remember, at this stage it’s all about efficiency.

After the sketch stage, I scanned in the drawings and started working in Illustrator. At this point, I can start to think about fonts and clean up my designs. Usually, I end up exploring ideas outside of what I played with in sketch stage – in fact, by the end of the whole process my artboard looks like someone threw up Logo Soup over it. It’s how I work and it has served me well thus far!

Anyway, at the first stage of Illustrator I work in black and white. I do this so as to not let color influence the design yet – everything is on an even keel, and then color gets added at a later stage. Here’s some of the working files from the artboard:

DRAFT 1

At this point, I sat back and took a look at the artboard and asked myself some questions. Am I headed down the right road? Am I accurately representing Turnkey the way Randor indicated? Answering these questions positively, I started working with colors. This project was a little easier, as Randor expressed a desire to try and keep the same color palette as the previous identity – mainly the electric blue. After working with color, I took the 4 logos I felt were the strongest and put them into a client proof sheet and sent it to Randor. Included were basic instructions (what to look for, sleep on it, get back to me and we’ll meet etc). This is the document I sent:

Essentially, this document shows the 4 logos, explains each in clear language, and provides samples of the typefaces and colors used. As a designer, I highly suggest using client proof pages like this – they’re relatively quick and easy, and they look professional.

DRAFT 2

Randor got back to me in a few days – he’s a good client – and expressed interest in the first logo. However, he did want to see logo one with a different symbol, something a little easier for the market to identify with. He also wanted to see the previously mentioned sine wave logo. Armed with this feedback, I went back for round 2. Here’s the second draft proof sheet I sent:

In my mind, the first logo is obviously the strongest. And the fourth looks like a) a tennis ball, b) a baseball, or c) a lawsuit from Pepsi waiting to happen. I expressed my thoughts on all four logos, and Randor agreed: number one was the strongest.

DRAFT 3

For the final round, I tweaked a little bit as I felt the triangle was slightly too tight to the borders of the circle. I also wanted to see how the symbol looked with a vertical left-side edge to the triangle. Here is what came from the final round of revisions:

The first version of the play symbol is in the centre, with the other versions around it. The revisions are small, but make a big difference. One thing Randor enjoyed about the logo is its flexibility – the symbol can be situated to the left or above the typeface, and it’s easily reversed out depending on what it’s being printed on.

FINAL DESIGN

After this final round of revisions, the logo design was settled on.

At the end, as always, we supplied Randor with the logo in a few formats (hi-res JPEG, web-ready PNG, vector) and in a few versions (color, black on white, white on black). The idea behind this is to ensure he can tackle most instances when the logo needs to be used without always coming back to us. Clients appreciate it, and a happy client is a referring client!

Randor also got a small Graphic Standards Manual as part of his package. In this manual, we outline the exact specifications of logo use (hexidecimal color, CMYK color, which logo to use for what application, typefaces, etc). This helps ensure consistent branding throughout, and we highly recommend it to our clients. I’ll be writing a blog on Graphic Standards Manuals soon, so subscribe to the RSS if you don’t want to miss it!

And that’s it! One Logo-of-the-Day winning logo design, from A to Z. Hope you enjoyed it – please share!

Your logo is the face of your business. It needs to project the image you want for your business; it needs to attract your target market; it needs to be effective in a range of mediums. Each client is unique, and thus each client’s logo is unique. So how do you know what a great logo looks like? How can you articulate the qualities of a good logo? What goes in to a logo design process?

Those questions, and more, are what we aim to answer with this article. If you are looking into hiring a designer to create your logo, or rebrand your business, please read on. This article will tell you what to look for in a logo, and reveal to you exactly how Paper Leaf goes about creating logos for our [many, happy] clients. Hit the jump for more info!

OBJECTIVES

Of course, a project is doomed to failure without defined goals & objectives. Be sure that your designer knows the specific objectives & goals of your logo, so that your logo reflects your business!

VECTOR GRAPHICS & WHY THEY MATTER

Logos must be designed in vector format. There is no ifs, ands, or buts about it. What is a vector graphic, you ask? Well, a vector graphic is a graphic that can be resized, to any size big or small, without any loss of quality. You know how photos (commonly in .jpeg or .png format) get all pixelated and distorted-looking when you try and print them super-big, or when you resize them to a bigger size than the original? Yeah. That doesn’t happen with vector graphics, because it is a graphic based on mathematical equations which get recalculated every time you resize the graphic. The result is sharp edges, no pixelation, and a great looking graphic at any size – billboard to letterhead.

Paper Leaf designs logos strictly in vector format – if any designers propose a raster-based logo (that’s what digital photographs are – raster images), say “HAH! You can’t fool me! I DEMAND VECTOR!”. We use Adobe Illustrator, the industry-leading vector graphics program, to make your logo.

USABILITY & EFFECTIVENESS

Alright, you’re sold on vector graphics. But a vector logo is no good if its usability & effectiveness are non-existent. So what makes a usable & effective logo?

First, you need to think of your target market. Who are you targeting? If your target demographic is males between the ages of 18-25 who work in the oilfield, chances are a logo that consists of a unicorn riding a wave of rainbows won’t really hit home with them. So make sure your logo designer is designing with your target market in mind.

Second, you need to think of all the various ways your logo will be used. Website, letterhead, business card, envelope, coffee cups, pens, sure. But what about billboards? Murals? Large banners? The point I’m trying to make here is that if your logo isn’t eye-catching and viewable/readable at various sizes – from huge to small – your logo will not be effective at all of these sizes. You don’t want to have one logo for every day use, and one for large items – there goes your branding. Lesson? Make sure your logo designer designs a logo that works at all sizes on a variety of mediums.

OUR DESIGN PROCESS

So how do we go about creating a logo? Well, after initial inquiries and such, we send the client a design brief. This brief, when filled out, holds everything there is to know about the project (objectives, information about the client, project details, etc). After getting the brief back, we research the project. What is currently out there? How can we be different? What are some good sources of inspiration?

After researching & brainstorm, we go to the sketch format. We outline a variety of ideas and choose the best 3-4 to hone. Using Adobe Illustrator, we refine these ideas (in black and white, so as to focus on the idea & not the colors – yet). After we get the 3-4 drafts where we want them, we start working with color.

Once the 3-4 first drafts are completed, we compile them into a Proof Page. This is a one-page document that showcases each logo, explains the meanings & ideas behind the logos and shows the typefaces and colors used. This is sent to the client for approval & revisions.

From there, we ask our clients to choose the one logo they most prefer and to provide more input to us. It is important to note it is best if the client details any problems they have with the design, rather than any potential solutions per se. This way we can use our expertise to come up with a proper visual solution to the problem. An example of this might be to say “I find the font used to be too traditional” as opposed to saying “I want to see the logo with Comic Sans”. That being said, there are no steadfast rules & we try what our clients want to see!

Anyway, from providing the first 3-4 drafts, we go through a two-revision process (where the client has two rounds of revisions to get the logo to the approved stage). This works well – it promotes good communication and keeps the project moving efficiently. We call this the 3-Draft, 2-Revision workflow, which you can read more about in our article 5 Ways to be a More Efficient Designer.

Once we have reached the final round and everyone is happy, your logo is complete! Overall, the whole logo design process takes 8+ hours, depending on the specifics of the project.

WHAT YOU GET

To recap, we have designed an effective vector-based logo that has high usability no matter the size it’s shown at, or what it’s viewed on. We have followed a 3-Draft, 2-Revision workflow to reach an approved final logo- a process which keeps the project focused & moving smoothly. So – what exactly do you get?

When we design logos, we deliver to the client a package that ensures they can get their logo on near-any medium without having to come back to Paper Leaf (however, you’re always welcome!). Our delivered logo package consists of the following:

• a vector file containing the logo in color, black-on-white and white-on-black
• a color PNG of the logo (hi-res & web versions)
• a white-on-black PNG of the logo (hi-res & web versions)
• a black-on-white PNG of the logo (hi-res & web versions)
• plus any additional formats requested by the client

This comes in a neat little zipped file. We also keep all of these versions on our hard drives for redundancy.

So there you have it! Everything you – the client – needs to know about logos in one nice little article. Also, if you’re interested in a logo design for your business, don’t hesitate to contact us!