Logo design: from logo concept to corporate image including everything about your branding

Useful definitions:

Logo or Logotype

Recognizable and distinctive graphic design, stylized name, unique symbol, or other similar for the identification of an organization. It will be used on all advertisements, communications, literature, products, stationery, and vehicles. Not to be confused with a brand, which identifies a product or a family of products. An important feature of the effective logo is readability.

Mark

It is a sign or symbol consisting of combinations of letters, writings, numbers, painted symbols (also called pictorial), also taken from or coming from ancient prints, stamps, icons to summarize the corporate image and the brand image.
In the case of graphic mark it is characterized by appropriate colors and often combined with writings bearing the name of the Company, product, or service.
Contrary to what is often imagined, the mark can also be a sound.

One thing that I have metabolized over many years of experience in the area of logo design, is that when a logo or mark is commissioned, those who advance the request rarely know exactly what they are searching for and often do not understand how to choose the creative team that they will have to deal with.

I mean, that there is a lot of confusion about the “logo designer”, especially since the widespread use of digital graphics softwares and maybe their too easy availability has shifted attention to the fact of getting something pretty in a budget, against the cost of time and skills, which involves the true path of graphic design and study of a mark or logo.

Not by chance, the design of the logo or brand, in ancient times was made entirely by hand, from the draft to the finished design. By now, most of the graphic designers no longer start with hand drawing.
However, having some notions of creative and technical drawing is an excellent starting point for designing original letters or graphic elements from scratch.
This would be useful for example, in order to create a Logo or Brand not just using existing characters (fonts), but having very original letters!

Design by hand of a logotype, involves the knowledge of technical design and precise rules: when I speak of hand drawing I do not mean the pictographic mark, characterized by the graphic-symbolic element invented by the creative, but a meticulous graphic project realized by hand, through which the letters, the characters that will constitute our logo, take shape. Subsequently, the hand drawing is scanned and therefore subject to vector reconstruction.

Symbolism, geometry, balance between spaces and thickness of the characters, when possible a draft hand draw…
My starting point for logo design is always a deep analysis of competitors image and targets of Customer mixed with genuine creativity and originality.

In my opinion the best result about logo design, beside theoretical knowledge and IT skills, come always from intuitions and perceptions…