Rebranding 101: My Brainstorming Process to Create an Artist Logo
Creating a logo scares the shit out of me.
Out of all the visual elements involved with a brand - profile pictures, those long horizontal bars on the top of social media profiles, font/color choices, whatever - the logo is the most intense. It’s a tiny, simple thing. It has to be easily seen and understood at a small size - and you really, really don’t want to change it.
Think about the Nike swoop logo. They’ve never changed that shit. It is a fucking LINE. How does one find such an elegant logo?
I’m embarrassed to admit that I’ve never made a logo before. I let it slide and forgot about it with previous branding efforts.
As an artist, talking about “branding” and "logos" is the least cool thing, but if you look around - all the big acts have logos. It’s not uncool, it’s totally standard. People just want to pretend they’re “pure artists”, “we’d never think about the business” - bullshit!
Even these artsy fucks have a logo!
I have no secrets. So I’ll give you the scoop. Here is the brainstorming process I used to get past the initial uncertainty/fear of logos and get into some interesting ideas:
The Logo Brainstorming Process
Brainstorming is about allowing yourself to be dumb. You come up with 100 ideas so you can find the 5 decent ones scattered throughout.
Self-consciousness and doubt are truly the enemy in this phase. There’s no clean, easy way to do it. You can’t skip the bad ideas. I find it best to go into the opposite direction: Just think up a ton of ridiculous ideas, let myself be stupid, and sort it out later.
My goal was to fill up one full notebook page with logo concepts. Here’s what I ended up with:
I’ll type it out as well:
(1) Me w/ Megaphone
(2) Hourglass w/ flower blooming out
(3) some kind of brain/mind
(4) me going “sh!!”
(5) an open book with my face on the page
(6) fire
(7) naked
(8) headless w/ arm extended forward holding detached head
(9) a UFO
(10) me writing in a notebook
(11) me at the front door
(12) beckoning viewer to come in
(13) megaphone by itself
(14) my head w/ a broadcast antenna coming out
(15) me selfie-ing
(16) a microscope
(17) a magnifying glass
(18) a mouth running
(19) a guitar that is also a video game controller
(20) me at a chessboard
(21) …or a checkers board
(22) 2+2=5
(23) me sitting in a pile of books
(24) me sitting surrounded by music gear
(25) tye-dye spiral backdrop
(26) me showing empty wallet
(27) one of those walls covered in notes/pins/etc like in a movie
(28) just my face
(29) dog wearing headphones
(30) lightbulb
(31) my face w/ lightbulb on top
(32) a drum machine.
That’s some unbridled, un-diluted creativity right there. After thinking all of that into existence, I put a star next to the ideas that seemed like they have the most potential. Those were: (1), (2), (14), (18), (23), and (24).
This process is great. It’s important to break through the wall of self-consciousness to get to the childlike state of playing with art, where all real progress seems to happen.
Tomorrow: Drafting
The next step is to actually try out the best of these ideas. In my post tomorrow, I will show you how I turn these concepts from ideas into rough drafts, using my sketchbook to quickly get an idea of what logo ideas are the coolest in practice.
In the meantime, let me know: What is your brainstorming process? Do you do any “stream of consciousness” or similar exercises to shake loose new ideas?
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I always like to do anti-brainstorming or anti solution, not quite sure how they call it. But you basically write down the worst things that could happen/ what you absolutely don't want to have associated with your design (seriously, the worst!).
That usually gives another fun and more open insight and from there it's sometimes easier to figure out what you actually want your design to express. I always find it to be a different level of brainstorming, as my thoughts always wander from the purely visual zone to the more abstract meaning behind. I have never tried it with a logo though, but I should think it'd work just a well :)
This is a very interesting idea. It seems like doing it the way you describe, it's almost like brainstorming on steroids - forces you to go right to your worst fears!!
I really like doing visual art and writing for that reason - it's easier for me to "let myself be terrible" with them, whereas with music (my main "passion" or whatever) my ego gets all weird about it sometimes. If I was going to force myself to write a bad song, I would feel like.. IDK, like I would feel like "nobody can ever hear this, or they will think I am bad at music!! OH NO!!" With writing or visual art, it's more like "haha ok let's try this"
I'll try to make myself do this next time I brainstorm... very interesting concept.
I do a stream of consciousness for pretty much every project, but every logo is different for me.
Some take days to even draw up a concept, some hit the screen immediately and get approved before I do another sample. It's such a wild process.
I love this video from Aaron Draplin about logo design, very inspiring
I just watched the whole video, so insightful! You could die doing a drinking game every time he says "and we got something coming together!"
What strikes me is how he focuses on those really simple ideas. It's tricky when a logo needs to be super small. Definitely gonna try some of his tricks while I work on my logo again later, thanks for this.
His work is incredible! I just ordered his book as well
Thank you for sharing your ideas and the process you are using.
I haven't focused much on a logo and brand, however, I do brainstorm a lot, mostly on musical motifs and ideas.
One effective process I use involves playing my original ideas right before going to bed at night.
Quite often I awake with additional parts to a tune, a whole new motif to develop or even a fix to where in a bar, the line shall start.
A very recent example is my melodic bass lead in, starting on the '3' to this jam: SteemGleener
I appreciate your thoughts, ideas and input for sure, my good man.
Oh yeah I've heard of that idea before, doing it right before sleep & after waking up. I think Josh Waitzkin talks about it in his book "Art of Learning", he recommends using a journal. I might give it a try with the logo if I get stuck. thanks for the tip
Out of the ideas you've picked to have the most potential I think number 2 is the one I'd go for, it seems to be the most versatile of the logo ideas.
I'm terrible at brainstorming, that being said, everything I do starts off as stream of consciousness until something sticks.
Thanks for the feedback, I did some mockups of #2 which I'm gonna include in tomorrows post. Its an interesting one.
If everything you do starts as stream of consciousness, on some level that IS brainstorming, right? :-)
I look forward to seeing them.
And, yeah, to some degree, stream of consciousness could be considered brainstorming, but I've always viewed brainstorming as a much more structured, planned effort whereas stream of consciousness feels freer, I see it as more of an improvisational flow. But that's just how I view it.
It's a very interesting way to proceed. Thank you very much.
You are welcome.