Written by
Tomé Carvalho
Founders ask for a logo because it is the part of a brand they can point at. Most of the time the real problem is three steps earlier.
The first email usually says the same thing: we need a logo, we launch in six weeks, what does it cost? It is a reasonable question and almost always the wrong one.
The thing you can point at
A logo is attractive because it is concrete. You can put it on a slide, send it to an investor and feel that progress was made. But a mark has no meaning of its own. It borrows everything from the name, the product and the way the company speaks, and if those are not settled the mark has nothing to borrow.
What comes first
We start with three sentences: what you make, who it is for, and why they should pick you over the obvious alternative. If those take more than a morning to write, that is the project. The identity can wait a fortnight.
When the sentences are right, the mark tends to be quick. Several of our favourite identities took an afternoon to draw, after a month of deciding what they were for.