Research

• Search for demographic information about your target customers. List their likes and dislikes about your product or service. Look at magazines and other media that your target market consumes, and jot down common features (for instance, upscale vs. inexpensive or form vs. function or grungy vs. traditional).
  
  Study your industry. This research includes analyzing your competitors' logos. Take note of their commonalities and differences. Write a list of the qualities each logo suggests, and compare that to the qualities you want your logo to project. Look at the logos of both direct competitors and others within our industry for inspiration and design direction.
  
  

Brainstorm

• List words associated with your business name. The words can be qualities (for instance, custom, upscale or rich) or objects (such as hammers, nails or houses). Come up with as many words as you can think of to give yourself a variety of ideas to use in the sketching stage. Search for common phrases that use the words on your list.
  
  

Sketch

• Sketch your ideas. Draw ideas for your logo using the list of qualities and objects you created in researching and brainstorming. Many initial logo concepts may seem to be overly obvious. It may take many pages of your notebook to design a creative, unique logo design. Think of a visual way to interpret the words or phrases you came up with during brainstorming. For instance, the word tulip could be interpreted visually as a mouth to represent "two lips."
  
  

Design

• Use your sketches to create your logo on the computer. Try different fonts to find the best match for your logo style. Explore variations of your sketches by changing the overall shape of your designs. You could put an object inside a shape (such as a circle or square) or leave the item alone to have an irregular outline. After perfecting your design in black and white, choose colors that reflect your brand position (for example, traditional colors such as blue and red or more modern colors such as lime and tangerine).