Determine the goals of the new logo by deciding what you want the logo to accomplish. Make a list of three to five keywords or descriptions of how the company or logo should be perceived (modern, trustworthy, caring, etc). These keywords will act as your guiding principles as you sketch and choose logos.
Gather as much information as possible about the company or person for whom you're creating the logo. Look closely at the company's previous branding, noting how the logos were used and what colors were employed.
Identify the company's main competition. Take careful notes about the symbols, colors and font choices the competition made in designing its logo. Picking out the competition (and its logo selections) will help direct your sketching and brainstorming because you'll be able to do something completely unique. Oftentimes, companies in certain industries will have similar logo colors or shapes. (Companies in the "green" sector are almost always green; companies in construction are often orange or yellow.) By seeing what the competition is doing, you can make purposeful decisions to stand out.
Use pencil and paper to begin sketching ideas. Your sketches don’t have to be complex, they just need to record your concepts. Ideally, you will make as many sketches as possible, but a good guideline would be to draw at least 50 different ideas. The more concepts you put on paper, the more likely you are to come up with a unique logo.
Step away from your sketches and ideas. Ideally, you will wait until the next day or longer before you come back to the logo study. Joanne Cantor, Ph.D. and professor emerita at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said in her May 15, 2010, blog post on the Psychology Today website that "...if you learn something and then sleep on it, what you've learned becomes clearer just as a function of sleeping. But what's even more interesting is that sleeping on a problem helps people find better solutions." Therefore, if you take a night to sleep before returning to your work, you're more likely to come up with a unique logo.
Look at the sketches you made previously. Pick out six to eight of the most successful logos. A successful logo can be described as one that is simple but memorable.
Ask yourself how you can improve and simplify the design. Sketch out these refinements on a sheet of white paper.
Go to the computer and using an illustrating program, such as Adobe Illustrator or CorelDRAW, digitize your ideas in black and white. By limiting the colors in the initial design, you force yourself to focus on the shapes and readability of the logo, instead of the color.
Look carefully at how well each logo communicates the ideas and goals you defined in the preparation stage. Narrow down your digitized sketches to two or three of your favorite logos.
Go to your computer and add as many as four colors to each of your chosen concepts. Less is more. Depending on the printing process, when you reproduce the logo on business cards, envelopes, letterhead and note cards, the more colors you have, the more the printing will cost.
Refer back to the goals you defined in your preparation and choose the logo that best reflects the person or company it will represent.