The purpose of this blog post is to give a basic overview of the process of the logo creation steps taken at Noble Works. This is an outline and is not to be taken as a rigid set of rules. This is also not a contract that has to be adhered to. Hopefully this gives clarity to what the normal creative process looks like between the client and our creative team.
FREE CONSULTATION MEETING
We offer and highly encourage a half-hour meeting between the client and our Art Director. Often times a salesperson will also participate. The purpose of this meeting is for us to hear about the client’s needs and get as much input as possible so that hopefully the whole process will go smoothly. We ask questions and take notes so we will be prepared to start work on the project if the client agrees with the estimate. We will talk over the process and inform the client of all that will be delivered at the completion of the project.
RESEARCH
If the client agrees to pay for an hour of work we will do some research and brainstorming and create a virtual mood board. Mood boards are a collection images that show design styles and color schemes inspiration. Sometimes they also include patterns, textures, fonts and photos.
PROOF STAGE
Client picks a direction or two and we develop those into fairly finished proofs. We may show minor variations of each direction to show things like color schemes or different font options. This stage will cost roughly half of the total cost estimate for the project and the client will be required to pay that before we work on this stage.
EDITS (IF NEEDED)
Client gives feedback on their one or sometimes two favorites of the proofs and if necessary we do minor edits to those designs. This stage may require extra fees added to the total if what is being requested was not clearly communicated to our team before starting the logo creation.
FINALIZE
Once the client approves a design we do final (fine-tuning) refinements and present a finished logo if any significant changes have been done. If nothing has been done that the customer will notice in cleaning up the art we may skip showing the customer this stage.
CREATE FILES AND BRANDING GUIDE
When we are sure that the logo and any variations of the logo are done and the client pays the remaining outstanding fees we create multiple file types of each of the finalized logo versions. We provide both vector files (AI, PDF and EPS) and raster files (PNG and JPEG). Also included is a branding guide. The guide can range from a simple visual explanation of the computer files to a full-blown booklet. A booklet could include but is not limited to showing main colors, main and sub fonts, and branding rules.
