Logo design process

While my role here at T&S has recently shifted toward project management, I’ll always be a designer at heart. And one of the things I get to do is help our clients with their logos. There are essentially three different ways I do that.

1. Slight tweaks

Sometimes our clients come to us with a logo that just needs a couple modifications. Or maybe they’re happy with their logo, but they need a high resolution—or vectorized—version. Or maybe they don’t have one at all, and are getting something else from us, but can’t afford to also pay for a logo.

In those cases, the time I invest is minimal, but it still takes care of their needs.

2. Basic logos

Other times, clients have a pretty good idea of what they want their logo to look like, but they don’t have the graphic design skills to make it themselves. Since they know, like, and trust us, they ask us to take care of it for them.

I invest more time in those cases, usually a couple hours. Generally the client is actually paying for that work.

3. Custom logos

The third case is the one I really enjoy. That’s when clients come to us with an idea of what they want their logo to convey, but they want to rely on our expertise to determine what that actually looks like. In those cases, they have more of a budget we can work with as well.

That’s where I invest the most time. There are several rounds of logo designs, with a lot of options and revisions.

Case Study: Pax Thermal Inspections

Let’s look at one of our clients, Thomas Van Ness, the owner of Pax Thermal Inspections. I first sat down with Thomas to determine his preferences, his needs, and how he was actually going to use the logo.

Among other things, Pax Thermal Inspections offers thermal imaging inspections of commercial roofing. Thomas knew he wanted to avoid anything that implied residential roofing, like a sloped roof.

Here’s the first round of logos I sent to Thomas.

You can see I sent four different options. It’s pretty normal for the most drastic revisions to happen after this first round of logos, and this was no exception.

After communicating with Thomas on what he liked and didn’t like about each of the four options, I sent the second round of logos.

Thomas liked option two from the second round the best, but he wanted to make some additional changes. Once I made the changes, I sent over the third round of logos.

When he saw those two variations on the logos, Thomas decided that since the writing and images on his marketing material would talk about the thermal imaging, he didn’t need to communicate that directly with his logo. So we ended up with this final version.

And for our custom logos, that’s a pretty normal process. Below you can see the logo in action on a few different marketing items we created for Thomas.

Of course, my goal is always that the logo looks great and the client is happy. Here’s what Thomas had to say.

I would like to take a minute to give a short recommendation for T& S Online Marketing, and share a little of my story.

I contacted Tim after a referral from a business associate. I came to him with a service to offer, an idea and not much else. I tried to describe what I saw in my head as a final product, but I know that was a bit sketchy.

Tim and the T&S team sat down with me to discuss what I was trying to accomplish and turn my vision into reality. Holly Kosec was the team member that took the lead on my project. Over about a 90 day period she took my vision and created a logo, website, business cards and collateral. T&S took my nebulous concept and made it work. At no time did I feel out of control, and Leann kept me informed as to the team’s progress throughout the process. Even though a couple of items that I requested were not part of my online marketing, T&S helped me through that as well.

It is without hesitation that I would recommend T&S Online Marketing to anyone that is looking to create an online presence, or upgrade what their current online marketing to the next level

Thomas Van Ness, Pax Thermal Inspections

Thanks, Thomas!