Using This Guide
This step-by-step guide leads you through the complete process of designing a logo, from brief to debrief. There are however some things to be mindful of as you work through the method and develop your process.
Time indicators
At the start of each step, you’ll see a time indicator. These time indicators are how long (on average) each step takes, from data taken over many years of repeating this process. In total, once you’ve got this process down it will take you around 8 hours (give or take a few hours).
These time indicators are meant to be used as guidelines, and can be used as goals to work towards. Some steps you may nail on first go, and others you may need to work on.
If you are new to logo design, don’t be discouraged if you go over time. Because you are new to the process it will most likely take much longer. It might help to ignore the time indicators to begin with, and then use them later on when you are more familiar and practised in the process (still record your time to analyse your progress, though!).
Skipping steps
Some of the steps in this method may be similar to what you already incorporate in to your logo design process, which is great – you’ve got a jump-start! But it’s very important that you follow the steps in the correct order, and don’t skip any steps.
When you skip steps, something goes wrong! Whether it’s going over time & budget, creating concepts that don’t fit the brief, or misinterpreting the client’s vision for their brand – most problems in the logo design process can be traced back to a specific step (or steps) missed.
Tangents
In certain spaces, tangents are good for creativity and an great way to explore avenues and ideas in depth. But without being kept in check, you can end up too far down a time-wasting tangent, which inevitably becomes destructive to the progress of your logo design process.
So in the context of this guide, we’ll focus particularly on time-wasting tangents, and how to keep them at bay in order to keep you on track.
The Logo Design Process Kit
Occasionally you’ll see references to resources found in my Logo Design Process Kit, not found in this guide. It’s not necessary to buy this kit in order to use the the 9Ds method, but if you want to implement this process into your workflow quickly, this kit will help you do just that. You can get the kit here.
Alright, so are you ready to learn the 9Ds?
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