After pages and pages¹ of sketches, we narrowed the logos down to 10 thumbnails or so. These sketches were then scanned and brought into Illustrator — their new vectorized home. Now in Illustrator, the process basically started over again: I would take one idea and modify it—hopefully generating dozens of itirations.² Christopher would periodically review my progress, give a Yae or Nae, some guidance, and I would keep clicking.
cpa lead process, part 1.
One of the very first projects I worked on at MINE™ was a logo for CPA Lead, a marketing company. Coming in as an intern I was anxious to get my hands dirty in a real project. This project in particular was exciting to work on, as I knew that MINE™ has quite a history in designing logos. I was really curious to see how they went about the process, and to pick up on any secret logo design techniques.
The process went something like this (actually exactly like this:) I sit down with Christopher, and he explains the client’s industry and what their goals are for the logo. He talks about more general ideas (“They don’t want this.”, “It should look more like this.”, “Don’t make it cute.”, etc), and gives me pretty broad directions to work toward.
people’s design award.
Every year the Cooper Hewitt curates the People’s Design Award, a design competition where people can vote on their favorite designed object or thing. Everything is OK, MINE’s D-I-Y social activist project, has been nominated and is in the running.
success, full success.
Being a design intern is a complex beast. You come to your position itching to design for real projects. You want to get your hands dirty and impress your employer. However, a lot of your time is spent on non-design related tasks (image research, mailing, etc) — things that keep the office afloat and running smoothly.