Posted by
Maddy Leslie
The process of logo design involves much more than finding a cool typeface for your business name and making it ‘tech blue’ (more of our thoughts on that later…).
It’s a deep dive into your brand and your audience, defining your difference, and crafting a resilient, refined design that inspires and motivates—a design that communicates your brand clearly and consistently to your customers and investors. But what does that look like in practice?
Like any good engineer, we’re only too happy to share our process. In this article, we’ll walk you through our logo design approach, from brand strategy and concept development to that all-important colour selection, using examples from our work with Concord.
1. Starting with brand strategy
Designing your logo without a brand strategy is like buying furniture for your house without painting the walls, laying the carpets, or measuring the rooms. You have no idea if it’s going to fit, either functionally or aesthetically.
So, our first step is always to craft our clients’ brand strategy (or review their existing strategy if it’s fresh out of the box and working well).
We’ve got another, more detailed blog post dedicated to the ROI of brand strategy if you want to understand its value. But, for logo design, brand strategy is fundamental for three key reasons.
Synchronicity
A successful brand strategy unifies the internal and external perceptions of your business. You’d want to burst into the office of any of your employees, stakeholders, or customers, ask them to describe your company in a few words and get very similar answers. (We wouldn’t recommend actually doing that, but you get the idea—it’s the same effect you’re aiming for.)
Your logo is a crucial part of achieving that synchronisation. It’s a visual key that evokes an overall sense of purpose and value. But you need to be clear on your purpose and value first.
Consistency
Let’s return to our house analogy. If you buy a bold, neon pink sofa for your calming, avocado-coloured lounge, your guests will feel very confused (and maybe a little nauseous).
If your logo feels incongruous with the rest of your brand, they’ll start to undermine each other and confuse or even deter your audience. Brand consistency feels premium, professional, and reliable, which adds value to your proposition—and that’s not just our opinion. In a survey of more than 400 organisations, Marq found that companies with consistent branding experienced up to 20 percent more growth and 33 percent higher revenue compared to those without.
Strengths and weaknesses
If you sell bleeding-edge proprietary tech but don’t supply outside your own region, you’ll want to steer clear of any visual elements that imply you’re global. If you sell highly commoditised tech but lead the way in customer service, your logo should represent that human touch.
A deep understanding of your company’s strengths and weaknesses will elevate your logo concept and resonate with your target audience.
2. Exploring what you like (and don’t like)
Once we’ve understood the context for your logo (your brand strategy), it’s time for some guilt-free judgment.
During the logo design kick-off meeting, our team of designers—The Pixels—will gauge your preferences by showing you a selection of other brands’ logos. Safe in the knowledge that they’ll never hear a word you tell us, you’ll share your thoughts about them. We usually ask questions like:
- Which ones do you like or dislike?
- What do you like or dislike about them?
- Which shapes do you prefer? (organic, geometric, or a mix of both)
- What typography do you prefer? (such as futuristic, sans serif, and mono)
Our goal is to produce a logo that you love and feel proud of, so we aim to tap into your brand instinct in this exercise. No preparation, just first impressions. After all, it’s how your audiences will eventually view your logo.
3. Sketching out your brand personality
We don’t make any design decisions without a clear reason, and preferences alone are too subjective. So, armed with deep knowledge of your brand and your logo preferences, we complete our exploration with two exercises. These are:
- Competitor research: Competitors play a key role in your audience’s expectations and brand perceptions in your market, so they always factor into our development process. We’ll look at the type of logos they use, their form, and their colour choices to identify trends and opportunities for differentiation.
- Brand keywords: Once we’re familiar with your brand strategy, we’ll distill it into a few powerful brand keywords. These help guide and focus our logo concept development.
Next, our designers put stylus to tablet and sketch out some initial ideas.
How we come up with early logo ideas
At this stage, our designers cast a wide net and consider multiple types of logo, from abstract mark to wordmark. They’ll also experiment with different symbols, colour palettes, and typography and refine their recommendations based on their understanding of your brand strategy and logo goals.
If your brand values centre on being human and approachable, we’ll recommend a warmer colour palette.
If sustainability forms a significant part of your business, we’ll incorporate symbols that represent nature and the environment.
Our goal is to differentiate your brand, so some of the initial ideas might feel like a bold leap. But they’re always the measured response of an experienced designer to your business and brand context.
4. Developing and refining your favourite concepts
We believe collaboration yields the best results, so as one of our clients, you get to see the outcome of every design process. No hiding all our work until a big reveal that risks leaves you disappointed and a little confused. The journey is just as important.
At every step, we want to equip you with the knowledge and expert recommendations to make informed decisions. So, to borrow a Pixar-ism, you’ll always get to see the ‘ugly babies’ (early logo ideas) and discuss your thoughts with us. More of what you like, what you don’t like, and why.
Together, we’ll select two or three sketches with the highest potential. We’ll take careful note of your feedback, and begin refining these concepts into more polished logo designs.
5. Selecting colour
When we present early ideas or even refined options for logo design, we always do so in black and white. The reason? To keep your feedback focused on a form that’s simple and memorable, like all the best tech logos (think Apple, Spotify and Slack).
Colour can profoundly affect our perceptions and emotions. Human eyes are most sensitive to yellow-green hues, even at night, which is why most hazard signs are yellow. And some studies have shown that your mood can impact decisions about colour. So, while colour is a critical element of your logo design, we want it to be the final decision you make.
Trends in tech company logos - a note on ‘tech blue’
You may have noticed a lot of companies, particularly tech companies, using blue as their core brand colour—and there are good reasons for this.
- According to a worldwide YouGov survey, blue is the world’s favourite colour. So it follows that blue logos are more likely to offer instant appeal to more of the population.
- In nature, we mainly see the colour blue in sunny skies and large bodies of clear, still water such as lakes, seas, and oceans. As a result, blue tends to inspire feelings of calm, peace, and positivity.
So, blue is a quick win if you want to get customers on-side. It’s also the most popular colour for business logos—38 percent of Fortune 500 companies' logos are blue. But if you’re looking to truly differentiate your brand, it’s worth entertaining other colours.
Decisively different logo design
We’ll be the first to say that branding doesn’t begin and end with a logo. But it’s also the most pervasive visual element of your brand, from browser favicons to billboard adverts. It needs to stand out and still feel like it fits your business and your market.
If this sounds like an intricate balancing act, it’s because it is. Thankfully, it’s one we do well at Articulate Marketing. If you want to differentiate your purpose-driven tech business with a new logo (or a full rebrand) we’d love to explore how we can help. You can book your discovery call in just a few clicks.
This content was reviewed and updated for freshness in 2025.
