The Logo Smith

It’s easy to take company and business logos for granted, but without a logo there’s really nothing to build upon, and around. The logo is the foundation from which everything else grows.

A company logo design needs to full fill many roles; it performs as a beacon from which it communicates on so many different levels. 

A typical business logo design process includes: research of competing competitors & target audience; investigation of alternative design directions & ideas; refinement of a chosen logo design; testing across brand touch-points, and finally adoption of the chosen logo design by the client.

On the outside, a business logo mark that is clean and functional, conveys simplicity and depth of character, is the ultimate aim during the development and design phase of a logo and brand identity design project.

A clean and simple looking company logo mark is rarely simple in its development and design, but it will appear as though this simplicity was easy.

The company logo design will often be a complex weave of horizontal, vertical, angular alignments and intersections, along with other design grid principles, to ensure the logo is balanced and well formed in its final form.

Whilst a business logo isn’t the entirety of a visual brand identity: a memorable logo mark can certainly help create a lasting impression in the eyes of the beholder.

→ View Logo Portfolio

The Monomarks Collection consists of Individual: Logo Marks, Brand Marks, Type Marks, Emblems, Symbols and Icons, taken from my logo portfolio, displayed in glorious techniblack; stripped of all colour and context.

I go to great lengths to ensure that each logo I design works in it’s purest form; stripped of all colour, and in most cases; all wording. 

The most common format for a logo design is typically referred to as a ‘combination’ where both the logo mark, and the logo wording, are presented as one combined logo design.

When you take just the graphical element away from the wording you are left the logo mark, and it’s this part of the logo that forms the basis for Monomarks.

The benefit of a logo mark that works well in solid black is that it will often translate well to small sizes, such as those required for: application icons, social media profile images, favicon, avatars, etc.

→ View Monomarks Collection

The brand identity of a company is far more than a company logo design, symbol, icon, word mark etc. 

For example, the brand identity will consist of a varied range of both physical and emotive elements; some can be seen, some touched, some smelt and many play on our emotions.

Brand identities can also include aspects of product design: applying brand logo designs to various products & equipment, such as: Flash Array Hardware for Pure Storage; Bottle, Label & Packaging for BrainExcell; Exhibition Stands for Abacus Insurance; Animations for ADXPRS; Stationery Designs; Logo & Brand Identity Guidelines for SuperblyCo & Spareto.

→ View The Brand Gallery

Before Graham was a freelance logo designer, he had been online (AOL, ICQ) and blogging (Typepad) since the late 1999’s.

The Design Blog of freelance logo designer, The Logo Smith, enters the timeline around 2008, and only gains momentum a few years after that.

It was only when The Logo Smith came into existence, that the whole practice of blogging and social media became more of a priority, rather than a personal hobby.