With no digital interface in the way, you have complete freedom to explore, and if you wake up in the night with an idea you don’t want to lose, a pen and paper by your bedside is still the best way to get it down. With the many digital tools available today, you might consider going straight to your computer to create a logo design, but using a sketchpad gives you a chance to rest your eyes from the glare of brightly lit pixels and, more importantly, record design ideas much more quickly and freely. Sketches of Firefox mascots by Martijn Rijven, who was commissioned by Wolff Olins What you discover in this initial phase of a project can help ensure that you don't miss the market when you start developing your logo design. What makes them different from other brands? Who are they there for and what do they most value? Some of these questions might seem so straightforward as to be unnecessary, but they can be challenging to answer and will lead to more questions about the business. Make sure you ask your client why they exist, what they do and how they do it. Every client is different, and even in the same profession, people do their jobs in different ways. Getting to know the client and their product will help you choose the strongest design direction and make it easier to get a consensus on your logo design further down the line. One of the most interesting parts of being a designer is that you get to learn new things with each project. Logo design should begin with some groundwork. Logos like those of Mercedes and Woolmark have become priceless assets for their companies Below designer David Airey offers his 10 golden rules of logo design to help you do just that. The job of designers is to distil the essence of a brand into the shape and colour that’s most likely to endure. Only if that’s enough to hold our attention do we start to read. When we look at something, we see shape and colour before we read. Before anything else we see shape, we see colour, and if that’s enough to hold our attention, then we’ll read David Airey When we look at something, we don’t read first. The aim of logo design should therefore be to create something that people can easily picture when they think about their experiences with a product, company or service. And a logo acts as a brand's face, allowing people to connect with it and remember it. When you think about a person who’s made some kind of impact on your life, you can probably picture what they look like. Brand identity design can include everything from uniforms, vehicle graphics, business cards, product packaging, billboard advertising and coffee mugs and other collaterals to photographic style and the choice of fonts. With hundreds, even thousands of brands competing for our attention, brands need to differentiate themselves visually. This is achieved through brand identity design – a range of elements that work together to create a distinctive picture of the brand in our minds. And it takes a special mix of design skills, creative theory and skilful application to execute a logo design that's truly unique, appealing and memorable (see our pick of the best logos for examples). We're not saying that logo design is the only element in successful branding, but it's one that needs to be got right from the outset because it's often at the centre of the whole brand strategy.

When consumers connect with a logo design, they're often more inclined to invest their time or money in the company or product. A logo can tell us a lot about a brand, including (sometimes) what a brand does and what it stands for. A logo is usually the first piece of branding that a potential customer sees and the piece that makes the biggest impression on us and stays with us the longest (if it's successful). Let's first recall just why logo design is so important.

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