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In graphic design there is no project that gets designed more than a logo. And when designing a logo, the designer is faced with a tone of challenges for such a small project. It seems like the simplier solutions are usually the ones that are the hardest to create. Whenever I design a logo I first start with an adjective sort exercise where I will break down each phrase of the name of a company into columns, and then list as many different synonyms for each column, then try and make some random connections with the results hoping to come up with a unique spin on the symbol I will use for the logo.

In many cases I will simply do a type treatment but for the most part I love trying to develop an icon that can help tell the story.

This process has been pretty good, but it relies on my intuition. Or my own personal interpretation. Which is an unknown variable, that can complicate the logo designing process, when its time to “sell” my idea to the client for approval.

Today I discovered a really interesting research tool that could help in getting the ball rolling.

Its called symbols.com http://www.symbols.com/index/wordindex-0.html

Its a dictionary for symbols, which is pretty cool to check out. I recently had a project where I was working with a fantastic title of Sexy in STL.

And the challenge was to develop an icon that represented sexy, in a non gender way. And while I think a lot of what I did was “hot” the client decided to go with a text only version so that it would cater to both male and female audiences.

I decided to test the symbol library for “sexy”, and the first symbol was an arrow point up, and I thought wow, that would have been a great icon to try and work into the logo. it was simple enough and suggestive enough that it could have worked.

I’m glad I decided to test it because I probably would have claimed, “I don’t want every logo I design to look like a prince logo or some kind of egyptian hieroglyph”. The reality is that this will prove to be a great research tool in trying to tell a story in a logo with very simple shapes and elements, especially when the symbols that come up are as simple as this one, I could see how even the typography could be improved on with this symbol. I can’t wait to play around with my next logo project using this symbol library as a starting point.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 1st, 2009 at 9:30 am and is filed under Inspirada. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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2 Responses to “Logo Design Symbols Meaning Inspirada”

1. Brian McClean Says:

   December 2nd, 2009 at 6:18 pm

   Hi Noel,

   Just came across your posting in LinkIn and checked it out. I too design alot of logos and I am sure this can come in useful. Thanks for tip and hope this finds you well. Still keeping our eyes open for that next MIA demo project.

   Brian McClean
   Creative Director
   UBM design Central

2. Noel Wiggins Says:

   December 2nd, 2009 at 6:51 pm

   cool I’m glad your as stoked as I am about it. I think its an awesome step in creating something unique but meaningful.

   Hope to collaborate with you again on another project whether its for the MIA’rs +/or others.

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