The Logo Company Case Study
The Training Mat
Introduction
The Training Mat is a martial arts school for men women and children of all ages. They use a system called “White Tiger Kenpo”.
The logo design is to be 4 color (red, black, white and gold) and to incorporate the “bamboo” script. They would like a shield design with a border wide enough to hold “The Training Mat” on top, “White Tiger Kenpo” on the left and “Western Combat Arts” on the right. In the middle of the shield they would like a tigers head in white with a black border. The border needs to have a brush stroke look. The interior of the shield (where the tigers head is) should be red and the outside border of the shield should black with the writing done in gold bamboo script. In the upper left hand corner of the interior of the shield (the red area) would like an "O" done in black bamboo script. In the upper right a "H" and at the bottom a "M".
The Design Process
The first thing that happens when we receive a new business logo design order is to get all our design team together for a brain storming meeting and start shooting ideas. There are a minimum of 3 designers per project. Some clients feel that having one designer is better as “Too many cooks…” and others believe “The more the merrier”, but projects can have more or less designers depending on the client. The designers will have a meeting and each logo designer will come up with design concepts to be worked upon by the group. This is also when they may ask the client for additional information. This is the creative stage and leads to the design of unique concepts.
Initial Concepts
By day three the designers will be sending out the initial concepts of the company logo design. These designs are presented to another designer (team leader of another business logo design project) for inspection and approval. The selected logo designs are then provided to the client for viewing and they can provide any revision instructions for each of the designs.
In the email we send to the client with the initial concepts we also explain about the colors used by our design teams as we do not use RGB (Red, Green, Blue) color palette but instead the professional Pantone color palette.
The RGB color scheme is used on TV's, computer monitors and home/office printers. The Pantone color scheme is the industry standard and all professional printers use this color scheme as it has greater variety of pre-mixed colors for a consistent corporate look.
We also direct the client to available Fonts from the online library at Adobe (we stock most of the Adobe fonts). Here the client can choose a font which appeals to them.
Design Concepts
Client Feedback
Client Response
The client takes as long as they need to review the designs and think of any revisions they feel are necessary. When they are ready to move forward the client will provide us the instructions to carry out.
The client replied with the comment:
“Use the tiger and color format from (white tiger with red interior background, black exterior background with gold lettering on the border) Design 2, with the lettering and structure from
Design 4. Put a red line/trim around the exterior border of the emblem.
Reverse the lettering on "White tiger kenpo" so the word "white" starts at the top instead of at the bottom.
Reverse the lettering on "Western combat arts" so the word "western" starts at the bottom instead of at the top.
In the upper left corner of interior red field place an "O" using black lettering.
In the upper right corner of the interior red field place an "H" using black lettering.
At the bottom of the interior red field place an "M" using black lettering”
The client decided to focus on a single design. The client’s comments are passed on to the design team and they begin implementing the client’s instructions.
We aim to have the revised design/s back with the client in 3 business days.
1st Set of Revisions
These are the designs which the design team prepared for the client to view and from here the client will decide which design’s they would like move forward with:
The client responded to these designs with the following comments:
“We would like "The Training Mat" positioned inside of black border along with other writing. Straighten sides of shield design so the top does not curve inward.
Position of tiger head is too low, might be due to the placement of the lettering inside of red field. I am open to any suggestions as far as place of the letters "O" "H" "M". Possibly remove the stars at the bottom and replace them, three sections (have the bottom of the sections larger than the top and possibly in a white) and position the "O" "H" "M" inside the sections. If this does not look good from a graphic designer's perspective I am interested in any suggestions.”
Once again the design is passed back to our design team who implement the client’s request. The length of the design process depends entirely upon the number of revision rounds requested by the client. Each revision round can take up to 3 days for the designs to be sent back to the client.
