MANAGE CLIENT EXPECTATIONS

LOGO DESIGN – STAGE 3

In terms of the amount of designs you should be putting forward – that depends on what you have agreed with the client.

At a fish in sea we have fixed fee logo packages which outline how many initial designs the client gets and how many rounds of revision after that. Your initial concepts should be finished and polished logos – and presented in a high quality manner – don’t bombard the client with all your workings, and pages and pages of ideas or have the company name duplicated in loads of different fonts!! They don’t want to see that. You should be presenting them with well thought out, clean, finished and different logo design concepts that you are happy with, that fulfil the brief and you could run with straight away if they are chosen at that point. It can happen! Do not include concepts that don’t fulfill the brief! That’s just pure lazy, and the chances are that the client will choose the duff design for a reason that you were unaware of and you will be left thinking “Ohhh, I wish I didn’t include that one”… serves you right as you then have to implement it into other elements of the clients branding further down the line! Be proud of your work, or don’t share it. If it is not ready, you really need to refine some more.

BE RUTHLESS WITH YOUR DECISION MAKING

The logo concepts should all differ from each other and communicate the brand message in a different way. Don’t put forward the same icon with a different font – give your client the variation and designs that all have merit in their own right. If you can’t decide between 2 logos that look similar, then put it forward as an additional alternative. Feel free to give the client more than the agreed initial concepts (extra brownie points!) but only if you feel that the extra one is as strong as the rest, but be ruthless with your decision making. Omit the weaker ones and put forward only your best. Occasionally you may find that you don’t hit the clients needs with any of your first designs and the weaker designs you saved will be like gold dust to help spring board you to come up with new and fresh ideas, when a little time has passed.