Twenty questions to answer before anyone designs your logo

Why a brief beats a mood board

A designer can draw almost anything. What they cannot do is guess which of the thousand reasonable directions matches a business they have known for twenty minutes.

When a client says they do not like a concept but cannot say why, the missing piece is nearly always one of the questions below. Answering them upfront usually removes one full revision round, which is real money.

The business

1. What does the business actually do, in one sentence?No jargon. Say it as you would to a neighbour.
2. What is the business name and is it final?Redrawing a wordmark for a renamed business is a new project.
3. How long have you been going, and what changed to prompt this?A rebrand after ten years is a different exercise to a first logo.
4. Where do you want the business to be in three years?Design for that, not only for today. A name tied to one suburb or one product can box you in.
5. What do you sell most of, and what do you make most money on?These are often not the same, and the brand should lean towards the second.

The customer

1. Who is the customer, specifically?Age, income, where they live, what they do. A single real person beats a demographic bracket.
2. How do they currently find businesses like yours?Google, referral, walk-past, Facebook group. This tells us where the brand must work hardest.
3. What are they worried about before they buy?Price, trust, quality, being let down. The brand can answer that anxiety before a word is read.
4. What would make them choose someone else?Uncomfortable to answer and the most useful one on the list.

The competition

1. Name three competitors and their websites.We need to know what you will be sitting next to in search results.
2. What do you do better than them?Be honest. Faster, cheaper, more specialised, easier to reach.
3. Whose brand do you admire, in or out of your industry?And say what specifically you like, because it is rarely the logo itself.
4. Are there colours or styles you must avoid?Often because a competitor owns them locally.

The personality

1. If the business were a person, how would you describe them?Three or four adjectives. Reliable, warm, precise, bold.
2. Formal or informal?This drives typography more than anything else.
3. What must the brand never look like?Cheap, corporate, childish, dated. Easier to answer than the positive version.
4. Any meaning behind the name or story worth carrying into the mark?Only if it is genuinely yours. Forced symbolism reads as forced.

The practical constraints

1. Where will this logo physically appear?Vehicle, signage, uniform, invoice, app icon, embroidery. Embroidery in particular rules out fine detail.
2. Does it need to work in one colour?If it goes on a stamp, a fax header or a vehicle vinyl, yes.
3. What is the smallest size it will be used at?A mark that is readable on a billboard and illegible as a social avatar has failed half its job.