There are tons of blog entries on the Internet about the process of good logo design and there are plenty of examples of bad ones. (I can't link to it here, but trust me it's worth searching for "bad logo design" on Google.)
We recently went through the process of designing a logo for our 2007 User Conference. We selected Shepherd Boy Creative to do the design and creative work. They've been our business partners for over a year now. They do most of our web and print ad designs. They're well known for their t-shirt designs but I would highly recommend them for any graphic design needs you may have. Our goals for the logo were:
- Simplicity, it must be remain simple in color and flow
- Flat, it should not use any shadows or rounded effects
- Scalable, it could be used on small promotional items as well as large posters
- Flexible, the base colors can change if needed; the addition of a "year" or other elements does not detract from it
- Conveys our message of the "Dynamic" Church
We went into the process not knowing exactly what we wanted. I mean how does one pick a visual metaphor for the word "dynamic" anyway? But we also knew that we would "know it when we saw it". So we set Shepherd Boy off with our design goals in mind and waited to see what they came up.
End-to-end the design process took a little over two weeks. Obviously Shepherd Boy wasn't working on the logo full-time during that period. They came back with some early concepts within just a day or two of our initial request. We would discuss it internally for a day or so, pick one or two of our favorite concepts, and set them off to work again. We went through approximately 40 different logo designs before finally settling on the one shown below. We're quite pleased with the end result. Special thanks to Andy Mullins at Shepherd Boy for his fine work.
Click on the logo to see 20 of the different revisions we went through before settling on the final version.
