Jordan Hudgens: This is a very special topic for me and it's one where I've specifically asked for this one to be included because, to me, this gets as close to the design "black magic" as anything that I've ever worked with because I've been on a number of projects where the client asked me to design them a logo and... we're not going to show any of those.

Jesse Cook: Hahaha.

JH: They are not very good. And it always bothered me that, no matter how hard I tried, it seemed like I was not building something that looked professional. A little bit of it definitely comes down to the inspiration side, because I always was trying to create something completely unique, which is hard to do, period. But it's really hard to do with things like logos and those kinds of things. But then on top of it, I was missing a very important component. It's one thing that, when you and I sat down and talked about this and you showed me what your process was, I actually got really excited, because what Jesse's going to walk through is showing that designing logos and these kinds of branding components definitely has an art to it but there is also a very heavy science component.

JC: Branding is a big word, right? Whether we're talking specifically about logos or if we're talking about the overall feeling and whether that's being put into an app with the use of color and different branding elements. Or if we're just talking about the name and how this brand is supposed to be perceived. I mean, this could be a three-hour-long guide just talking about this.

It's definitely heavy on the design side. We're talking about very specific things of designing logos, and as you said, a lot of times, especially when you're freelancing, you're the tech guy and they want you to come up with a logo. So knowing a little bit about it is really important. My favorite thing I've ever heard about good branding is to be good storytellers, right? A lot of times if you're doing the branding for a company you think, "I need to make the company look as awesome as possible" when really, and this is what I love so much: You're not making the brand be the hero of the user's story. You're making the users the hero of their own story inside of this brand. It's really cool.

I mean, you look at car commercials and it's not about just making the car the coolest thing ever, it's that you're really cool inside the car. Like you're the hero, when you're using this car, right? So that's a really cool concept of what branding can convey, but you can get very granular into what is the actual specific scientific method and artistic method of establishing a good brand, telling that story, designing logos, and using color.

So with logos, they are... pretty frustrating, and also really gratifying when you get it right and it looks good. It's just awesome. You can go and look at other people's logos and you're just like oh well, duh like that's so easy. No. Not easy. Take something like the Nike logo, right? And you're like, I can make that in 2 seconds. It's like "Sure. You could. After you looked at it."

And Nike is actually a really good case study at looking at the differences between a descriptive logo and a distinctive logo. A descriptive logo is going to be a lot better at saying exactly what it is that this brand does. Think Dunkin' Donuts right? Dunkin' Donuts has coffee on it. Burger King has "Burger King" like, inside of the buns, right?

JH: Right.

JC: But Nike's logo isn't a shoe. It's this swoosh. Now, what's the swoosh doing? It's conveying motion. It's conveying the idea of what Nike is, but not necessarily what it is. And that's the difference between a descriptive and a distinctive logo. Sometimes you use one and sometimes you use the other.

If you really look at a lot of popular logos you'll start to identify where it's just like "I can't imagine this brand being anything different, but now that I'm looking at this logo... why did they decide to do this?" Because a lot of times that logo is just being used to establish strength or it's being used to establish wisdom. And you can do that based on how sharp the edges are, or how soft they are, or how thick it is, or how much negative space is inside of it.

There's a couple of really good examples that I can give from my own personal experience. One of them included not only doing the logo but actually doing the name as well. He came to us and he wanted to create these protein supplements that came in these pixie stick style packets for your pre-, intra- and post-workout. So he told us what the product was going to be, and he had an idea for a name and he wanted to call them "Meat Sticks". And we were like... can we try to think of something different?

JH: Haha!

JC: He said, "Sure if you think of anything better." To him, it was like "meatheads" and like, pixie stick things, and it's just like, that's not feeling right.

So we went through a long process of asking questions like, "What are the words associated with this? What are things we want this brand to be associated with?" And that helped drive, not only what we named it, but the logo that we designed. We ended up with a name that used vernacular that people in a gym would commonly use. Instead of "Meat Sticks", the name that we came up with was "Triset."

It's this process of using these three different individual packets. And you're doing a set of three of them, right? So Triset is actually a really good example of how you can communicate what it's doing, but in a distinctive way where you wouldn't necessarily know right off the bat. And then the logo is really cool. So the T at the beginning and the end come together and they form the logo, which is a column--establishing that strength that we wanted to communicate. And the logo mark, which would be that column, can be used, and then the logotype, which would be the entire Triset spelled out, can be used as well. So, a really good example of taking the idea that a customer wanted and then really conveying the power of that distinction.