He said: The Design Process

by Nick Belcher

I was pretty psyched to hear Mr. B’s idea to do this “he said/she said” blog idea. Knowing that Lisa’s and my own ideas and processes would be different, I thought it’d be a great insight into the minds of a couple design students. Lisa did a great job diving into what should be expected in the design process, so I’ll try not to go jump into all that as much with mine for the sake of redundancy.

As someone who has been interested in design for a long while, before high school even, I was also one of those kids who was very interested in the way things work. I used to tear stuff apart and put it back together, I took engineering and machining classes in school…If I didn’t go into graphic design, my second choice was to go into drafting and machining. And music has always played a HUGE part in my life. With that stuff said, in my self-branding process, I wanted a logo to kind of portray these important traits about me. I started sketching some stuff related to music (headphones, guitar/amp related things). I also (attempted) sketched to come up with a logo idea incorporating a suit and tattoos. To me, there’s nothing more B.A. (and no, I’m not talking about British Airways) than a guy walking down the street in a suit and tie and has his tattoos showing above the neckline or on the hands. To me, that’d be someone I hired to do my design (but that’s my personal opinion, and I’d be happy to dive into that if anyone is wondering why). I also started thinking about a logo in a biomechanical way. To me, a biomechanical design encompasses this organic, yet very exact and drafted way, and I felt that would represent me and my design company well (Google "Guy Aitchison" for a ridiculous look into biomech design, for those of you who are unfamiliar). Oh yeah, and I sketched a bunch of other stuff too. Don’t we all?


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So after going over the sketches and picking stuff apart and making decisions, it came the time to get them on the computer and actually make something out of them. I had a lot of fun with this step, and I personally love seeing designs come to life on the screen. We narrowed it down to five strong ideas…


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After going over the goods and bads of all five ideas, we (Mr. B, the class, and I) narrowed it down even further to 3, then 2, then finally one idea. We all decided the biomechanical idea would be the strongest. It had the most balanced composition as a logo, we all felt like it represented me well, and it was the one that could be most universally accepted (versus a tattoo oriented or guitar oriented logo). After tweaking the design a little, it was sent into color-comps. I toyed with a lot of ideas here and none really hit me. I then decided to kind of contrast the mechanical aspect of the design and give the logo some earth tones.


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So after all is said and done with the self-logo design, it’s on to designing stationary and other collateral to keep the self-branding, -promotion, and self-identity rolling. Too bad none of this is completely legit, right? Cuz I’m totally digging how my stationary is coming out! This whole process is why I got into design. I love it, and can’t wait to get into some more in the coming weeks!