Logo Design Tips: The Importance of Working in Solo Black to Full Colour

For any designer starting a new branding brief and creating a new logo can be a very exciting and challenging process, as your ideas and design will the face of a company and its most important asset. Designers can get caught up in a whirlwind of concepts and pathways, which are always a fun and a promising start. Sketching ideas, exploring imagery and type are all fundamental within the design process. However the key fundamental point designers need to be wary of is colour. Yes it’s an exciting part of the design process exploring suitable colour(s) to match the company’s look and feel, however more importantly we can forget one key element regarding colour, the logo working as a single tone colour while maintaining the same visual value as the full colour version.  

I personally start my digital concepts in pure solo black tone. Why? In order for a logo to be very versatile, it not only has to work in full colour, but also in black, white or any other solo tone. If the logo works in single black, it can work in any other single colour tone.  It is important to remember the logo would be implemented across all different platforms within the company, from digital to more tangible assets such as signage, uniforms and other hardware promotional merchandises.  It’s better to reverse engineer a logo from a solo black tone to full colour, as colour can always be added at a later part of the development stage.  

Also remember to take into consideration that the logo would be not only printed in colour, it will also be printed and faxed in black and white.  So it is also vital that the logo somewhat has the core visual values when printed in grayscale. 

Introducing colour at preliminary stages of the design process can also have dramatic negatives regarding client decision.  You can outstanding concepts and execution to the designs, however the client can be easily be put off by your colour choice at the beginning stage and shoot down a good design based on their taste and decision on colour.  Therefore working in so black presents the concept to the client as the core skeletal figure of the concept, and explain once a decision has been made over the chosen concept, colour exploration can be applied at a later stages of development. 

Let’s use the corporate identity project I did for Oldham Youth Forum as a case study to illustrate the above points:

An example process of a logo design starting off as solo black which then leads to other opportunities for the logo to work in white, against any coloured background and finally working in full colour.

The logo working as a single tone colour allows it to be more versatile for implementation across the company's tangible assets, such as uniform prints as illustrated in this photo.

It is also important to consider how the logo would  look if it was printed in greyscale, and if it still has a good visual representation to the origional full colour logo.