Logo design: Process & product

As a graphic designer, I love the process of creating - there are always ‘happy accidents’ that come out of playing with an idea. I wanted my students to experience the feeling of reiterating a design and seeing what bubbles up - what little design revelations would surface for them?!

Coercing kids to ‘do it again’ can cause distress, and understandably so if they’ve spent an hour doing a ‘good copy’ at the very start! Learning to start off quickly and refine along the way is the first lesson. The second is, design never happens in a vacuum. Third, you design for others, so get their feedback!

So what was their process?

Deciding on a name: Our final module was to design a logo, but first they had to come up with a business. Ideally the name and the slogan could elucidate what the business offered, but I also encouraged students to play with language features.

Mood board: It was great for young designers to know that inspiration can come from ‘copying’. When designing a logo for a dog walking business, use Google Images to see what’s out there! Make a mood board and pick and choose elements to meld into your own design.

Illustration & font: Our earlier work on using basic shapes feed into the illustration process. Students started sketching a range of different logos, played with and selected several ideas, gained feedback from the class, then began refining their final illustration element. Alongside the illustration was the name of their company - after all their hard work we wanted to find a font that complemented their illustration, not distracted.

Colour & arrangement: Designers used basic shapes to play with various arrangements of the illustration, company name and slogan, choose a main colour then used colour harmonies to pick accents.

Each year the akonga in our design classes come with different strengths and levels of commitment - it was great to have a group at the end who were passionate about their designs and the mahi they put in to get there!